Operation Hornung - Extermination

Extermination

There are several sources and accounts for the ensuing extermination campaign. Two Wehrmacht propagandists reported the attempt to turn this area into no mans land: This was carried out by slaughtering the population of the villages and farms located in this area down to the last infant. All houses were burned down. Cattle and food stocks were collected and taken out of the area. They also mentioned the panic that had spread, even among the hardened Belarusian auxiliary policemen, who still spoke about it months thereafter:

A particularly strong impression was left by accounts from members of the former Drushina I, who in February were witnesses to extermination actions against the Russian civilian population south of Słuck.

Descriptions of German cruelty, for instance cramming women and children into burning houses, spread rapidly among the civilian population.

Survivors from this region have movingly described how they felt when placed inside a dead zone. Gana Michalowna Grincewicz remembered: In my fear it seemed to me that no one was left in the world, that all had been killed.

This action stands out for the extermination of many large villages by the Germans. 1,046 people died in Lenin, 780 in Pusiczi, 787 in Adamowo and 426 in Kopacewiczi. A final total of 12,718 dead, among them 3,300 Jews, (from Słuck), were recorded. Only 65 prisoners were mentioned. Indeed the SS and police deported only 72 people as a labor force in the course of fighting in the Regional Commissariat White Ruthenia in February 1943. Between November 1942 and March 1943, no more than 3,589 persons had been made available to the so-called Sauckel Commission in the course of eleven major operations, during which at least 33,378 people were murdered.