The truth about the genocide of the Belarusian people

September 16, 2024

The Great Patriotic War became a time of unending sorrow for Belarusians. Many of our countrymen fell in battle, burned in the fires of Khatyn, died in concentration camps. Many of them did not manage to start families, did not know the happiness of fatherhood or motherhood. And precisely because of this, the memory of them and gratitude to them should never fade among us, their descendants, living under a peaceful sky, building modern Belarus and looking with optimism towards the future.

The implementation of the state historical policy in sovereign Belarus is one of the most important areas of ensuring the country's national security. In essence, it is a strategy of self-preservation, a tool for countering historical and political chaos.

It is for these purposes that on April 7, 2021, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Republic of Belarus initiated a criminal case on the fact of the genocide of the Belarusian people during the Great Patriotic War, the investigation of which continues to this day.

Employees of the district prosecutor's office are also part of the investigative group and are carrying out investigative and other actions aimed at documenting all the atrocities committed by the Nazi invaders and their accomplices against the civilian population in the territory of the Glubokoye district.

During the investigation, inspections of 47 settlements, completely or partially destroyed by the Nazis, were carried out, more than one and a half thousand archival documents related to the period of occupation of the Glubokoye district were examined, and more than 70 residents of the district, who were either underage prisoners of concentration camps or forcibly taken to Germany for forced labor during the war, have been identified and interviewed. The memories of these people are carefully recorded, and in some cases, with video recording.

It has been established that during the war years, 8,560 civilians were killed in the Glubokoye district, and 899 people were taken into German slavery.

It should be noted that by the beginning of 2023, a total of 16,000 people had been interviewed across the country as part of the criminal case on the genocide of the Belarusian people, of whom over 7,600 were prisoners of death camps.

The Republic lost more than half of its national wealth.

According to the preliminary results of the investigation by the Prosecutor General's Office into the criminal case of the genocide of the Belarusian people by Nazi German invaders and their accomplices:

over 3 million people were exterminated;

399,474 people were deported to Germany for forced labor;

over 580 death camps were established;

more than 140 large-scale punitive operations were carried out.

The damage caused by the Nazis and their accomplices, calculated based on the losses of the republic's national income, is estimated at 43,529.30 tons of gold, which as of October 1, 2022, is equivalent to 2,355.32 billion US dollars, or 2,081.91 billion British pounds.

During the investigation of the criminal case of genocide, over 10.5 thousand villages and hamlets (about 9.2 thousand before the investigation began) were identified as having suffered during the occupation years, including at least 216 settlements (186 before the criminal case was initiated) that shared the fate of Khatyn village, i.e., were completely destroyed along with their inhabitants and did not revive after the war.

Our district was not spared by such a tragedy.

Thanks to the recollections of witnesses of one of the terrible events of the war that took place in the Glubokoye region, collected by an employee of the Prozorky Rural Library, it was possible to confirm during the investigation of the criminal case of the genocide of the Belarusian people the fact of the extermination of over 150 civilians in the village of Sharagi, Glubokoye district, by Nazi German invaders on May 8, 1944.

On that May day, German invaders were conducting another punitive operation, "Spring Sun," against partisans and civilians of the Polotsk-Ushachi zone. Civilians from surrounding villages were rounded up in the small village of Sharagi, where the younger and healthier were selected and taken to the village of Zyabki for deportation to Germany. The elderly, women, children, and the sick were herded into three barns and burned alive. According to eyewitnesses of those events, people attempting to escape the burning structures were immediately shot. For several more days, civilians who had escaped the reprisal could smell the burnt human bodies, and the memory of the terrible blaze still stands before their eyes.

After the war, the village of Sharagi never revived. In 2002, students and teachers of Prozorky Secondary School erected a memorial sign at the site of the tragedy.

Currently, the issue of organizing field search operations at this significant location as part of the criminal case investigation is being considered.

Belarusians are a victorious people who demonstrated self-sacrifice, nationwide resistance to Nazism, and heroic feats during the Great Patriotic War.

The duty of contemporaries is to sacredly preserve the memory of the fallen in order to protect the truth about that terrible war, to preserve and strengthen the unity of our country.

 

District Prosecutor                                                                 

I.S. Volynets