Khatyn Massacre - The Massacre

The Massacre

On 22 March 1943, a German convoy was attacked by the Soviet partisans near Koziri village just 6 km away from Khatyn, resulting in the deaths of four police officers of Schutzmannschaft Batallion 118, a police battalion made up chiefly of Ukrainian collaborators, prisoners of war and deserters. Among the dead was 1936 Olympic Games champion Hauptmann Hans Woellke, the battalion's commanding officer.

That afternoon, the Schutzmannschaft Batallion 118, reinforced by troops from the Dirlewanger Brigade, a unit mostly composed of criminals recruited for anti-partisan duties, entered the village and drove the inhabitants from their houses and into a shed, which was then covered with straw and set on fire. The trapped people managed to break down the front doors, but in trying to escape, were killed by machine gun fire. 149 people, including 75 children, were killed. The village was then looted and burned to the ground.

Viktor Zhelobkovich, a seven-year-old boy, survived the fire in the shed under the corpse of his mother. Another boy, 12-year-old Anton Baranovsky, was left for dead due to a leg wound. The only adult survivor of the Khatyn massacre, 56-year-old village smith Yuzif Kaminsky, also wounded and burnt, recovered consciousness after the executioners had left. He supposedly found his burned son who later died in his arms. This incident was later artistically honored in the form of a statue at the Khatyn Memorial.