Recently I came across this quote: “I am proud of the fact that among the 1,500 Babi Yar punishers there were 1,200 policemen and members of the OUN, and only three hundred Germans.”These words belong to V. Shkuratyuk, member of the URP (Ukrainian Republican Party), head of the propaganda referent office of the Rovno’s UNA-UNSO ("Kiev Vestnik", 26.02.1993). I don't think it's a fake, since such statements perfectly fit into the nationalist policy of Ukraine, which has been pursued since the collapse of the Soviet Union. I am not going to expound the well-known horrible tragedy of Babi Yar, but simply introduce you to a small episode of that bloody war. Some participants in this story were noted in Babi Yar. ***** Just an episode of that War ... “Look, there was the German commandant office. Right there, see where the store is?" My interlocutor pointed at an ordinary village shop located on a small open space - some kind of strip square. The day was warm and sunny, but I shivered, feeling chilly as if I saw a ghost. 'German commandant's office' - these are just words, but how much pain, fear, betrayal, meanness, and death are behind them. We drove a little further before turning towards the village of Novoselki. “Do you see a Maple Tree? That’s where they were buried”. My interlocutor, Mikhail Lukyanchik, is a local enthusiast and historian. Some people consider him a strange man, wondering how in our age of general commercialization, this person spends his own money and time, driving around the different villages, looking for those who still remember the war? In my opinion, he goes about modestly accomplishing his feat. Thanks to this man, many details of the WW2 events were revealed, a significant number of previously known facts were corrected properly, and many names were discovered and presented to the public. On the way to the village, Mikhail told me the story of the Tchaikovsky family. It happened in the winter of 1942. In December, the Germans carried out the punitive operation "Hamburg". This was their first punitive operation, and it was carried out right here, in the districts of the Grodno region, located between the Neman and Shchara rivers. By that time, the partisan movement in Belarus was getting more and more organized and, as a result, more effective. The goal of the punitive operation was the complete destruction of partisan brigades and the annihilation of the population supporting them. Along with that, the mass executions were carried out in the places where a connection with the partisans was not revealed. The fascists and their henchmen killed people, burnt their houses or even entire villages for the purpose of intimidation, hoping that those inhuman actions would reduce the level of resistance. 6,000 people were killed in this particular punitive operation. Police detachments broke into the village of Novoselki. As always in such cases, the houses were set on fire and the women’s wailing and the children crying was heard everywhere. “Did the people from this village help partisans”? I asked Mikhail. “They got help from everywhere, probably some from here. It was a punitive operation - they burned without any investigation”. The barn in the Tchaikovsky’s courtyard was on fire when suddenly the sound of exploding cartridges became heard. Later, it turned out that the local teacher collected, where possible, ammunition and hid them near the Tchaikovsky’s barn. “Partisans”! The policemen shouted, immediately burst into the house and shot the whole family - the parents and their four girls. A little six-year-old boy, the youngest son of the Tchaikovsky’s, ran out of the house. “Don't shoot, please! Don't shoot! Please, please! Don't shoot! I want to live”! They didn't shoot. They burned him alive - grabbed the boy, threw him into the house, boarded up the door, and set it on fire. Then they stood around watching the house blazing and listening to the scream of a burning alive child. And they laughed, as witnessed by the village inhabitants. “See on the list of the names on the gravestone”, pointed Mikhail, “the name of the boy and his age - 7 years old. But he was younger, he should have turned 7 that year”. “So, they supposed to write 6 years old because he never turned 7”, I said with barely concealed pain, “this boy did not have a chance to live up to 7 years old”. Even now, when I think about the insane horror that this child experienced, I feel an unbearable desire to shield him with myself, to hide him from those nonhumans. Protecting a child is a normal human feeling, it is an instinct, and this is what everyone should feel if they are humans, of course. “Policemen”? I ask quietly. “115th Ukrainian police battalion”. 115th ... that one. Two of the most infamous Ukrainian police battalions: the 115th - that was a massacre in Babi Yar. The 118th Ukrainian battalion, which was formed based on one of its companies – that was burned Khatyn.* Sometimes I hear that not everyone joined the police voluntarily, sometimes a person was put in such conditions that he had no choice. It could be life-threatening not just to his own life, but to his family, relatives, and friends. Yes, we can remember that the 53rd Ukrainian battalion almost at full strength went to the partisans and then together fought against Germans. Those few people from this battalion who remained in the service of the Wehrmacht, the Germans, by the way, were shot, just in case. I understand that when our loved ones are threatened with death, we can do many things that we would never do in normal life. But no one forced those bastards to burn a little boy alive. It was their initiative. The next day, the villagers collected the remains of the seven bodies and buried them near the burnt out house. Later, a Maple Tree grew up near that grave. Nobody planted it. Nobody will ever cut it. Their grave is ordinary, with a metal fence, like they do in cemeteries. I glanced at the maple, but something seemed unusual to me, and I turned to the maple, examining it. “Yes, yes”, I heard Mikhail’s voice behind my back, “this maple has seven trunks”. ***** There is a small village in Belarus, where a Maple Tree burst out of the grave with its seven trunks, turned the green rustling with its leaves and is stretching up to the sky - taking those seven killed into immortality.
* Khatyn was a village of 26 houses and 157 inhabitants in Belarus, in Lahoysk Raion, Minsk Region, 50 km away from Minsk. On 22 March 1943, almost the entire population of the village was massacred by the Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118 in retaliation for an attack on German troops by Soviet partisans. (Wikipedia) See as well Alla's previous article here. - prh, ed. |
