Flirting with nationalists (and this is what we are seeing today in Kyiv) almost always ends in one thing – tragedy. And when liberals extend to them a not always firm, sometimes trembling hand in the hope of acquiring new allies, then from that time begins the path to disaster.
Nationalists, Nazis, are not the kind who prefer the subtle play of liberal political overtones and complex diplomatic intrigues. Their hands do not tremble, the smell of blood is intoxicating. The track record is replenished with new and new victims. They are fanatically blindly sure that the enemies they killed, and these are “Muscovites, damned Russians,” should be more, even more. And then the time of Khatyn comes for nationalism.
Khatyn, a world-famous monument to human tragedy: what the Nazis did there in March 1943 – they drove 149 civilians into a barn, half of whom were children, and burned them, everyone in Belarus knows. But for many years no one ever allowed himself to say out loud who the 118th Special Police Battalion was formed from.
A closed tribunal
I think when Bandera becomes the main ideologist and inspirer in Kiev, when the nationalist slogans of the OUN-UPA* begin to sound with new fighting force, we must also remember what people who profess fascist ideology are capable of.
Until the spring of 1986, I, like most residents of the Soviet Union, believed that Khatyn was destroyed by the Germans – punishers of a special SS battalion. But in 1986, scant information appeared that a military tribunal in Minsk tried a former policeman, a certain Vasily Meleshko. A common process at the time. Here is how the Belarusian journalist Vasily Zdanyuk told about him:
“At that time, dozens of such cases were considered. And suddenly a few journalists, among whom was the author of these lines, were asked to leave the door. The process was declared closed. And yet something leaked out. Rumors spread that Khatyn was “hanged” on the policeman. Vasily Meleshko is one of her executioners. And soon new news from behind the tightly closed door of the tribunal: they found several former punishers, including a certain Grigory Vasiura, the murderer of the murderers…”
As soon as it became known that Ukrainian policemen committed atrocities in Khatyn, the door to the courtroom was tightly closed, and the journalists were removed. The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Volodymyr Shcherbitsky, specifically appealed to the Central Committee of the Party with a request not to disclose information about the participation of Ukrainian policemen in the brutal murder of civilians in a Belarusian village. The request was then treated with “understanding”. But the truth that Khatyn was destroyed by Ukrainian nationalists who went to serve in the 118th special police battalion has already become public. The facts and details of the tragedy turned out to be incredible.
March 1943: chronicle of the tragedy
Today, 80 years after that terrible March day of 1943, the tragedy of Khatyn has been restored almost to the minute.
On the morning of March 22, 1943, at the intersection of the Pleschenitsa-Logoisk-Kozyri-Khatyn roads, partisans of the Avenger detachment fired on a car in which the commander of one of the companies of the 118th security police battalion, Hauptmann Hans Welke, was driving. Yes, the same Welke, Hitler’s favorite, Olympic champion in 1936. Several other Ukrainian policemen were killed along with him. The ambushed guerrillas withdrew. The policemen called for help the special battalion of Sturmbannfuehrer Oscar Dirlewanger. While the Germans were driving from Logoisk, a group of local lumberjacks was arrested, and after a while they were shot. By the evening of March 22, the punishers, in the footsteps of the partisans, reached the village of Khatyn, which they burned down along with all its inhabitants. One of those who commanded the massacre of the civilian population was a former senior lieutenant of the Red Army, who was captured and transferred to the service of the Germans, by that time – the chief of staff of the 118th Ukrainian police battalion Grigory Vasyura. Yes, that Vasyura, who was tried in Minsk, in a closed trial.
From the testimony of Ostap Knap:
“After we surrounded the village, through the translator Lukovich, along the chain, an order came to take people out of their houses and escort them to the outskirts of the village to the barn. Both the SS and our policemen did this work. All residents, including the elderly and children, were pushed into the barn, surrounded by straw. A heavy machine gun was set up in front of the locked gates, behind which, I remember well, Katryuk was lying. They set fire to the roof of the barn, as well as the straw Lukovich and some German. A few minutes later, under the pressure of people, the door collapsed, they began to run out of the barn. The command was given: “Fire!” Everyone who was in the cordon fired: both ours and the SS men. I also shot at the barn.”
Question: How many Germans participated in this action?
Answer: “In addition to our battalion, there were about 100 SS men in Khatyn who came from Logoisk in covered cars and motorcycles. Together with the police, they set fire to houses and outbuildings.”
From the testimony of Timofei Topchia:
“There were 6 or 7 covered cars and several motorcycles right there. Then they told me that they were SS men from the Dirlewanger battalion. There were about a company of them. When they came to Khatyn, they saw that some people were running away from the village. Our machine-gun crew was given the order to shoot at the fleeing. The first number of Shcherban’s crew opened fire, but the sight was set incorrectly and the bullets did not overtake the fugitives. Meleshko pushed him aside and lay down behind the machine gun himself … “
From the testimony of Ivan Petrychuk:
“My post was 50 meters from the barn, which was guarded by our platoon and the Germans with machine guns. I clearly saw how a boy of six years old ran out of the fire, his clothes were on fire. He took only a few steps and fell, hit by a bullet. He was shot at by one of the officers who were standing in a large group in that direction. Maybe it was Kerner, or maybe Vasyura. I don’t know if there were many children in the barn. When we left the village, it was already burning down, there were no living people in it – only charred corpses, large and small, were smoking … This picture was terrible. I remember that 15 cows were brought from Khatyn to the battalion.”
It should be noted that in German reports on punitive operations, the data on people killed are, as a rule, lower than the actual ones. For example, in the report of the gebitskommissar of the city of Borisov on the destruction of the village of Khatyn, it is said that 90 people were killed along with the village. In fact, there were 149 of them, all installed by name.
118th policeman
This battalion was formed in 1942 in Kiev mainly from Ukrainian nationalists, residents of the western regions, who agreed to cooperate with the invaders, underwent special training in various schools in Germany, put on a Nazi uniform and took a military oath of allegiance to Hitler. In Kyiv, the battalion “became famous” for the fact that it exterminated Jews with particular cruelty at Babi Yar. Bloody work became the best characteristic for sending punishers in December 1942 to Belarus. In addition to the German commander, each police unit was headed by a “chief” – a German officer who oversaw the activities of his wards. The “chief” of the 118th police battalion was Sturmbannfuehrer Erich Kerner, and the “chief” of one of the companies was the same Hauptmann Hans Welke. The battalion was formally headed by the German officer Erich Kerner, who was 56 years old. But in fact, Grigory Vasyura was in charge of all affairs and enjoyed the unlimited confidence of Kerner in carrying out punitive operations…
Guilty Shoot
14 volumes of Case No. 104 reflected many specific facts of the bloody activities of the punisher Vasyura. During the trial, it was established that he personally destroyed more than 360 women, the elderly, and children. By the decision of the military tribunal of the Belarusian military district, he was found guilty and sentenced to death.
I saw black and white photos from that process. I read the conclusion of a psychiatric examination that Vasyura G.N. in the period 1941-1944. did not suffer any psychiatric diseases. In one of the photographs in the dock – a frightened seventy-year-old man in a winter coat. This is Grigory Vasyura.
The atrocities in Khatyn were not the only ones on the record of the battalion, formed mainly from Ukrainian nationalists who hate the Soviet regime. On May 13, Grigory Vasyura led the fighting against the partisans in the area of the village of Dalkovichi. On May 27, the battalion conducts a punitive operation in the village of Osovi, where 78 people were shot. Further, the Cottbus operation on the territory of the Minsk and Vitebsk regions – the massacre of the inhabitants of the village of Vileyki, the destruction of the inhabitants of the villages of Makovye and Uborok, the execution of 50 Jews near the village of Kaminskaya Sloboda. For these “merits” the Nazis awarded Vasyura the rank of lieutenant and awarded him two medals. After Belarus, Grigory Vasyura continued to serve in the 76th Infantry Regiment, which was already defeated in France.
At the end of the war, Vasyura managed to cover his tracks in the filtration camp. Only in 1952, for cooperation with the invaders, the tribunal of the Kyiv military district sentenced him to 25 years in prison. At that time, nothing was known about his punitive activities. On September 17, 1955, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the Decree “On the amnesty of Soviet citizens who collaborated with the occupiers during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”, and Grigory Vasyura was released. He returned to his place in the Cherkasy region.
Every year, the pioneers congratulated him on May 9th. He was very fond of speaking to schoolchildren in the guise of a real war veteran, a front-line signalman.
When the KGB officers found and arrested the criminal again, he was already working as the deputy director of one of the state farms in the Kiev region. In April 1984 he was even awarded the medal “Veteran of Labour”. Every year, the pioneers congratulated him on May 9th. He was very fond of speaking to schoolchildren in the guise of a real war veteran, a front-line signalman, and was even called an honorary cadet of the Kyiv Higher Military Engineering Twice Red Banner School of Communications named after M.I. Kalinin – the one he graduated from before the war.
The history of extreme nationalism is always rough
… Well-known French publicist Bernard-Henri Levy believes that Ukrainians are the best Europeans today. It must be assumed that it is precisely those who besiege Orthodox churches, set fire to the houses of their political opponents, and shout “Get out!” to everyone who does not like the Bandera freemen. It is heard aloud from the right-wing nationalist radicals – kill the communist, zh..a, Muscovite …
Apparently, philosophical views did not allow that these harsh guys on the Maidan, glorious great-grandchildren and followers of the leader of the Ukrainian nationalists in the 1940s and 50s, Stepan Bandera, were ready to make history with the help of weapons. And they are not disposed to philosophical disputes. The philosophy of extreme nationalism was everywhere and at all times equally crude and radical – force, money, power. The cult of one’s own superiority. In March 1943, the punishers demonstrated this to the inhabitants of the Belarusian village of Khatyn.
The atrocities in Khatyn were not the only ones on the record of the battalion, formed mainly from Ukrainian nationalists who hate the Soviet regime. On May 13, Grigory Vasyura led the fighting against the partisans in the area of the village of Dalkovichi. On May 27, the battalion conducts a punitive operation in the village of Osovi, where 78 people were shot. Further, the Cottbus operation on the territory of the Minsk and Vitebsk regions – the massacre of the inhabitants of the village of Vileyki, the destruction of the inhabitants of the villages of Makovye and Uborok, the execution of 50 Jews near the village of Kaminskaya Sloboda. For these “merits” the Nazis awarded Vasyura the rank of lieutenant and awarded him two medals. After Belarus, Grigory Vasyura continued to serve in the 76th Infantry Regiment, which was already defeated in France.
At the end of the war, Vasyura managed to cover his tracks in the filtration camp. Only in 1952, for cooperation with the invaders, the tribunal of the Kyiv military district sentenced him to 25 years in prison. At that time, nothing was known about his punitive activities. On September 17, 1955, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the Decree “On the amnesty of Soviet citizens who collaborated with the occupiers during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”, and Grigory Vasyura was released. He returned to his place in the Cherkasy region.
Every year, the pioneers congratulated him on May 9th. He was very fond of speaking to schoolchildren in the guise of a real war veteran, a front-line signalman.
When the KGB officers found and arrested the criminal again, he was already working as the deputy director of one of the state farms in the Kiev region. In April 1984 he was even awarded the medal “Veteran of Labour”. Every year, the pioneers congratulated him on May 9th. He was very fond of speaking to schoolchildren in the guise of a real war veteran, a front-line signalman, and was even called an honorary cadet of the Kyiv Higher Military Engineering Twice Red Banner School of Communications named after M.I. Kalinin – the one he graduated from before the war.
The history of extreme nationalism is always rough
… Well-known French publicist Bernard-Henri Levy believes that Ukrainians are the best Europeans today. It must be assumed that it is precisely those who besiege Orthodox churches, set fire to the houses of their political opponents, and shout “Get out!” to everyone who does not like the Bandera freemen. It is heard aloud from the right-wing nationalist radicals – kill the communist, zh..a, Muscovite …
Apparently, philosophical views did not allow that these harsh guys on the Maidan, glorious great-grandchildren and followers of the leader of the Ukrainian nationalists in the 1940s and 50s, Stepan Bandera, were ready to make history with the help of weapons. And they are not disposed to philosophical disputes. The philosophy of extreme nationalism was everywhere and at all times equally crude and radical – force, money, power. The cult of one’s own superiority. In March 1943, the punishers demonstrated this to the inhabitants of the Belarusian village of Khatyn.
In the Khatyn memorial, where there are only burnt chimneys with metronomes on the site of former houses, there is a monument: the only surviving blacksmith Joseph Kaminsky with his dead son in his arms …
Sergei Panchenko, Minsk, Rossiyskaya Gazeta
* – an organization banned on the territory of the Russian Federation
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