Opinions & Interviews

MINSK, 20 March (BelTA) - Belarusians should remind Western Europe more often of the heinous crimes of the Wehrmacht, guest historian Dmitry Stratievsky from Germany told reporters before the international science-to-practice conference "Khatyn: 1943-2013. The Event, People, Memory” dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the destruction of the Khatyn village, BelTA learned.

“If we do some kind of comparison, we will see that Belarus suffered the most of all the nations involved in World War II. Historians argue over whether every third or every fourth inhabitant of Belarus died during the war. But both estimates are monstrous! It was a deliberate genocide of the Belarusian nation. I would like to stress that the diplomatic mission and public organizations of Belarus should do much more to raise awareness of the German society and Western European countries about the monstrous crimes committed by the Wehrmacht in Belarus,” Dmitry Stratievsky said.

According to him, Israel, France, the Netherlands are among the countries who do not let the German society to forget about what happened during the war. “Belarus should follow suit. Too little is known about this tragedy in Germany,” said the historian.

Guest from Israel, Director of the Institute for Eastern Europe and the CIS in Tel Aviv Alexander Tsinker stressed that such tragedies must not be forgotten. Otherwise there is probability that it can happen again, even on the territory of modern Europe.

Scientists from Belarus, Russia, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Serbia, and Israel talk about the losses the civilian population of Belarus suffered during WWII, known and unknown facts about Khatyn and those villages that shared its fate.

The tragedy befell Khatyn on 22 March 1943. On that day the Nazis surrounded the village, drove the elderly, women and children into a shed and burned them alive, killing 149 people, 75 of them children. In 1969 the Khatyn Memorial, a symbol of pain and grief about those who died in the war, was opened to honor the memory of Khatyn and other villages that shared the fate of Khatyn and all Belarusians killed in the war.

The tragedy of Khatyn is not a random episode of the war. It was one of thousands attesting to the deliberate policy of genocide by Nazi Germany towards the people of Belarus. 9,200 of 100,000 villages in Belarus were burned down during the war. Some of them that were burned together with their people like Khatyn never came back to life after the war.