Tragedies in villages during the war. The tragedy of the Russian village. and some of its inhabitants
76 years ago, on March 22, 1943, the Belarusian village of Khatyn was destroyed by a punitive detachment. 149 villagers were burned alive or shot. After the Great Patriotic War, Khatyn became a symbol of the mass extermination of civilians on the territory of the USSR occupied by Germany. And everyone who heard about this tragedy wondered: who destroyed the Belarusian village and why?
Why did they burn Khatyn?
On the morning of March 22, the police battalion received an order to eliminate the damaged communication line between Logoisk and the village of Pleshchenitsy. While carrying out the mission, the battalion ran into a partisan ambush and lost three people in the firefight. One of those killed was Hans Welke, the 1936 Olympic champion in the shot put. He was the first German to win an athletics competition. Welke was personally congratulated by Hitler himself.
The Nazis decided to avenge the death of the Fuhrer's favorite. First they went to the village of Kozyri, because they decided that the partisans came from this particular settlement, and shot 26 lumberjacks there. But then it turned out that Welke was killed by partisans who spent the night in Khatyn. And it was this village that the Nazis chose to intimidate the residents of the area.
Who destroyed the village?
Participants in the extermination of the inhabitants of the village of Khatyn were the 118th battalion of the German auxiliary security police and the SS assault brigade "Dirlewanger". The first ones did the main work. They herded all the residents of Khatyn into a collective farm barn, threw a bolt on the door, lined the barn with straw and set it on fire. When the door collapsed under the pressure of people distraught with fear, they began to shoot at civilians from a heavy machine gun and machine guns.
It should be noted that today on various Internet forums there is a version that the punitive battalion was Ukrainian. But actually it is not. Firstly, this battalion was never called that. And secondly, the whole connection of this battalion with Ukraine is that it was formed in Kyiv from prisoners of war of the Red Army, who were captured on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital. Not only Ukrainians, but also Russians, as well as people of other nationalities served in the 118th, so only their actions, and not their nationality, should be assessed.
Did all the inhabitants of the village of Khatyn die?
Not everyone died; some residents survived. Of the adults, only 56-year-old blacksmith Joseph Kaminsky survived, who that morning went into the forest for brushwood. His 15-year-old son died in the Khatyn fire. It was the father and son Kaminsky who became the prototypes of the heroes of the monument, which was erected in Khatyn.
Two more girls survived - Yulia Klimovich and Maria Fedorovich. They managed to get out of the burning barn and escape to the neighboring village. But fate turned out to be cruel to them. Although their neighbors came out, they later died when the Nazis burned the neighboring village.
Anton Baranovsky, who was 12 years old at the time and whom the punishers mistook for dead, survived. Viktor Zhelobkovich (he was 7 years old) survived because he hid under the body of his murdered mother. 9-year-old Sofya Yaskevich, 13-year-old Vladimir Yaskevich and 13-year-old Alexander Zhelobkovich miraculously managed to hide when people were driven into the barn, and therefore survived.
Today, only two of the survivors are alive - Sofya Yaskevich and Viktor Zhelobkovich. The rest died. In total, 149 civilians were killed in Khatyn, 75 of whom were children.
What was the fate of the punishers?
The fate of the punishers turned out differently. In the 1970s, Stepan Sakhno was sentenced to 25 years in prison. In 1975, the battalion platoon commander Vasily Meleshko was shot. Vladimir Katryuk managed to escape to Canada. They learned about his past only in the late 1990s, but the Canadian side did not betray the villain. In 2015, he died of natural causes.
Grigory Vasyura, the chief of staff of the battalion, who was called the main executioner of Khatyn, managed to hide his past until the mid-1980s. After the war, he became the director of the economic department of the Velikodymersky state farm, was awarded the Veteran of Labor medal, became an honorary cadet at the Kyiv Military School of Communications named after Kalinin, and more than once spoke to young people in the guise of a front-line soldier. In 1985 he was sentenced to death.
Who decided to perpetuate the memory of the burned village?
The idea of creating a memorial complex on the site of the burned Khatyn belonged to the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus, Kirill Mazurov. In his memoirs he wrote:
“On one Sunday at the end of September 1963, Tikhon Yakovlevich Kiselev, then the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the BSSR, and I went to the outskirts of Minsk. Fifty kilometers from the city along the Vitebsk highway we turned right along the first road we came across. After driving a little, we stopped in a birch forest. Having passed it, we came out into a small clearing. Undoubtedly, in the past it was arable land, but it had not seen a plow for a long time and was overgrown with tall grass and bushes. In the center of the field, on a hill, we saw a burned village. A dozen or two charred chimneys, like monuments, rose to the sky. Almost nothing remains of the courtyards and courtyard buildings themselves - only gray stone foundations here and there. In front of us was a burned village, in which no one settled after the war. Not far away we saw a small herd of cows. An elderly man looked after them. They came up and started talking. From the shepherd they heard a terrible story about the tragic death of the village of Khatyn. The idea arose to immortalize Khatyn and its inhabitants.”
After Mazurov left for a promotion in Moscow in 1965, the construction of the memorial was carried out under the leadership of Pyotr Masherov, who came to replace him. In March 1967, a competition was announced, the winner of which was the team of architects Valentin Zankovich, architects Yuri Gradov, Leonid Levin and sculptor Sergei Selikhanov. The grand opening of the memorial took place in the summer of 1969. The memorial became not just a memory of a specific burned village, but a symbol of all Belarusian villages burned during that terrible war. In total, there were more than 9,000 such villages in Belarus, and 186 of them were never rebuilt.
Over the years of the memorial's existence, millions of people have visited it.
How can I learn more about the tragedy in Khatyn?
Those who are wondering what to read or watch about the tragic history of Khatyn should turn to the work of the writer Ales Adamovich. He is the author of the works “The Punishers” and “The Khatyn Tale”. Based on them, director Elem Klimov made the film “Come and See,” which was released in 1985. This is the story of a Belarusian boy, Flera, who witnessed a terrible punitive action and in a matter of days turned from a cheerful teenager into an old man. Film experts called this film one of the greatest films about the war.
Modern tourists who come to the country of blue lakes are attracted by.
Domestic violence has long ceased to surprise us and prompt intervention. Domestic cruelty is the norm. Death is nothing more than a talking point.
There are twelve villages of Pogorelovo in the Vologda region. In one of them, on March 15, Anatoly Ugryumov shot his wife Valentina Ugryumov, and then shot himself in the heart. At that time, their 20-year-old deaf-mute son Ivan was sleeping in the next room. You don’t even need to specify which Pogorelovo this happened in - it could have happened in any of them. The Ugryumovs were the parents of five children.
Two weeks after the murder, people in the village are still gossiping about what happened. Rumors are multiplying, versions are being put forward. A month before the tragedy, a car drove into Tolya Ugryumov’s tractor; they say it was driven by a former policeman. Both, they say, were hangovers. They made Ugryumov the culprit: he was deprived of his license and slapped with a thirty thousand fine (the money was sent by his mother). The court also ordered the police to pay 51 thousand for damages. And Tolya already had a loan for the TV.
It’s not difficult to get to Pogorelov, but it’s more difficult to get out of it: you go out at random and wait for a through bus. Target buses do not go here. Although it seems to be only 150 kilometers from Vologda, it’s not a backwater, it’s a neat, lively village. Three grocery stores with bread for 32 rubles (but on weekends you can’t get it either here or in neighboring villages), a House of Culture, Veteran Park, a school, a bank.
The Ugryumovs lived in house number 18 on Tsentralnaya Street - about 20 years ago the collective farm built it for workers. Dilapidated, gray, their house seems never painted and wild. Four curtained windows gaze unblinkingly: two in peeling wooden frames (the Ugryumovs lived here), two new plastic ones (their neighbors the Baevs live here).
The house where the Ugryumovs lived. Photo: Ekaterina Fomina / Novaya
The carpet from the crime scene and Ugryumov's trash were dragged into the yard.
On Sunday morning the village is peaceful and deserted. Gradislava Baeva is busy on her plot, clearing space for a chicken coop - it is not profitable to keep other animals in the village.
Meek, speaking in a low voice - completely out of tune with her booming name - Gradislava apologizes for her workmanlike appearance and invites her into the house.
The Baevs' kitchen is bright, clean, and simple. Variegated linoleum, plastic shelves, wood-look plastic panels on the walls. At the table with a still hot kettle are eighty-seven-year-old woman Nina (Gradislava’s mother) and her husband Sergei. He pours some tea for Baba Nina and puts in some gingerbread... Gradislava met her husband a couple of years ago, when both were already over fifty, at a retro disco in a neighboring village. Now they live happily - “even if they are poor, but without this hassle of drunks.” Gradislava works as a nurse at the Ryabinka kindergarten for seven thousand a month. In my free time, I used to go to a local club for belly dancing: within two months I “got into the excitement,” but then the rest of the dancers ran away - it was expensive to pay a hundred rubles for a lesson.
Sergei is not working now, he is waiting for a response from an oil company that can hire him as a driver. He's been waiting for eight months already.
Sergei and Gradislava remember the Sunday when the murder happened: they woke up early, were repairing the porch, but did not hear any shots from the street. At noon, neighbor Vanka, who has been considered deaf and dumb since childhood, ran out of the house, but recently began to utter some words. “Daddy’s a fool,” he howled and, raking the air with his hands, called for him.
I thought - they’re fighting again, separating them again! - Gradislava sighs. “It’s impossible not to go, that’s how Vanya calls, not like a human being.”
Valentina was lying on the bed in the bedroom.
In leggings, legs covered with a blanket, eyes open. Where the gallbladder is - a hole of about two centimeters, the blood of the slegon began to bake, went inside the peritoneum - Gradislava describes it as if she saw it yesterday. - I pay all attention to the wounds as a medical worker.
Anatoly was lying next to him, leaning against the wall. There is a five centimeter hole in the heart area, he shot at point-blank range.
Blood from chin to waist, everything was soaked through. The chest rose and blood came out, Sergei continues.
He never dared to touch the executed neighbors - he was afraid that they would be called an accomplice.
She seemed to expect that someday things would end badly. “He always scared everyone with this gun,” sighs Gradislava. “We used to be sleeping at two o’clock in the morning, and suddenly we’d hear that he was starting to run into the guys or twist someone’s arms. They fight, they fight. But if you don’t interfere with the family, they’ll sort it out themselves.
Once Ugryumov raised his hand against Gradislava’s son and cut his lip. She called the local police officer. The district police officer reported: there was no evidence of a crime. For several years, Gradislava formalized the demarcation of the site - “out of harm’s way,” although, if you think about it, they were already keeping their distance from their neighbors.
After that incident, they began to check once a year how Ugryumov stored his weapons. Once, his wife wanted to hand over the gun, Tolya tried to hide it with the neighbors. Gradislava denied it - “she has enough problems of her own.” The last time a policeman came to check was on March 14th.
So Gradislava did not wish harm to her neighbor, she only wanted to make it clear - “you too have authority.” She herself lived for 22 years with a husband who drank and beat. But she didn’t leave: she thought she had to come to terms with it and help him get out. When he said: “I’ll kill you!”, she ran away with the children. She returned only four years later, when her husband moved out in an unknown direction.
Now only the unnaturally bright landscape on the wall reminds Gradislav of his youth. It shows summer in her native village of Zalesye (two kilometers from here). Here she is, drawn: swinging her sister on a swing, next to her grandmother grazing sheep... In addition to Gradislava, there were four more children in the family, the father drank and drove the mother.
Now in the parental house, which has settled and is falling apart, drinking away their pension, and before that also their mother’s, Gradislava’s brother and sister still live. She recently took her mother away from them. Baba Nina is slowly losing her mind, in the evenings she counts her pension and carefully rearranges her handkerchiefs. And Zalesye is slowly ending. In a neighbor's house last September, an old woman hacked her husband to death and then hanged herself.
Valya probably wanted to live anyway,” Gradislava returns to the latest events. - I planted tomato seedlings on the windows, I was thinking about life!
This is such an unpleasant story... - Sergei concludes thoughtfully.
Valya and Tolya were buried in different cemeteries, that’s what Valentina’s sister decided.
Marina
So you need to drink less, nothing would have happened! - Marina blurted out from the threshold in response to my condolences. - Or take the keys to the safe with the gun - and that’s it!
Short, funny, with a long red tail, seventeen-year-old Marina Ugriumova came home today for the first time since the death of her parents. She is studying in Vologda to become a pastry chef. Traveling home is expensive, a stipend of 500 rubles is not enough for travel, and in order to get to the funeral (the parents were buried not in Pogorelovo, but in their hometown 400 kilometers from here) we had to borrow money.
Where did he get the gun from?
He’s our hunter,” Marina drags me into the corridor and points somewhere under the ceiling. - There’s a capercaillie’s tail hanging there.
After the funeral, the Ugryumov children went their separate ways. The eldest lives in Vologda with his family. Anatoly often reproached his wife that his son was not his, and did not even go to his wedding.
Deaf and mute Vanya ran around Pogorelov for a week, even went to a cafe in the evenings, but suddenly disappeared somewhere - they say his aunts took him away. The youngest, fifteen-year-old Vika, will live with her mother’s friend for up to forty days. Soon the middle brother Kolya, who is still studying in Ukhta, will return to Pogorelovo to formalize guardianship over his sisters.
Photo: Ekaterina Fomina / Novaya
Barsik, why are you screaming like crazy? - Marina decisively opens the flimsy window so that the cat can get home. “I thought he would die here.”
There are a dozen cans of cat food on the floor near the stove. The door to the parents' room is closed. In the living room there is a blanket with bears hanging on the wall, and the closet is filled with photographs of children. The brothers and Vicky have their mother’s snub nose. “Daddy's Daughters” is on TV, borrowed from a loan. On the table is a started packet of sunflower seeds and a memo from the guardian.
Marina is looking for her birth certificate to apply for a survivor's pension and rummaging through the shelves. All the chapters of life are packaged in packages: Kolya, Vanya, going to college...
We will now be fully supported by the state... - she states casually.
There is no evidence anywhere. There is a photo album in a box. A man is sleeping on a rug on the floor, a man is lying on the bed. “This is dad” - signed in a child’s handwriting. Mom against the background of cows Plum and Mint. There are no general photos. Marina says that dad signed up for the New Year five years ago, but didn’t last long.
Theory and practice
In January, in the village of Pavlovo, Vologda Region, a man stabbed to death his wife’s friend, to whom she had run away from him with her children. On February 2, in Belozersk, another man shot his wife’s colleague, of whom he was jealous. On February 19, a resident of Cherepovets wounded her roommate, who began beating her. On March 15, the day of the murder of the Ugryumovs, in another Vologda village, Nyuksenitsa, a drunk 27-year-old guy hit his ex-wife with his car and parked on her corpse.
Domestic squabbles are an everyday, ordinary matter. So much so that no one even keeps any statistics. Approximate figures: every year 14 thousand women die from domestic violence, relatively speaking, one woman dies every forty minutes. Every day more than 30 thousand women suffer beatings at home. There is no federal law on domestic violence. And will it be, when the Patriarchal Commission on Family Issues, Protection of Motherhood and Childhood proposes to equate “propaganda against the family” with extremism.
Vologda deputies of the Legislative Assembly are also working to reduce statistics. One must think that they are worried: over the entire last year, 11 thousand 319 family scandals were recorded here. To “protect family members from family rowdies,” they passed a new law. From March 25, a fine of 300 to 500 rubles will have to be paid for a family scandal. The statistics will definitely go down - the police will no longer interfere in domestic quarrels. Who wants to pay from the family budget?
The village council of Pogorelov has its own statistics: thirty families are registered. In total, 1,230 residents were registered in the village at the end of the year. “There was no reason to consider the Gryumovs dysfunctional.” The Family and School Assistance Commission works only in cases of violation of the rights of minors. “When violence between a woman and a man is no longer our authority,” explains Marinina’s classmate’s mother, Tatyana Savvatyevna. She works in the village council, replacing a social affairs specialist while she is on maternity leave. Are they lying, but in the village council they say that no one suspected what was happening at the Gloomy family’s house: “If something happens in my family, will I go talk to the neighbors?”
We have such family conflicts all the time, let’s put it this way,” Tatyana Savvatyevna continues. - Someone makes a row, even assaults, to be honest. But Valentina did not advertise this.
Calling the local police officer is also not a reason to check the family, she explains. The policeman does not transmit data to the village council, only once a year reports in numbers, without names, “the information is confidential.”
You can’t register all men who drink! We work mainly with single mothers or when both parents drink. A stepfather, for example, rapes his stepson. If the situation threatens the health and life of the child, an ambulance is called and we take the child to the hospital. We had a case: the baby could not be left at home, so the drunken mother had to be taken, she was breastfeeding.
The signal to the village council can come either from neighbors or from the school. But if, when the commission goes to the site, it turns out that the parents drank all weekend and were already sober on Monday, the signal will remain “just a signal.”
In general, a “signal” can mean that a child is walking around untidy and does not have school supplies. And Vika and Marina Ugryumov were “neat, clean, dressed” and studied well.
There was no reason to worry.
They have a father, they have a mother, how are you going to poke your nose in and point out something? - Tatyana Savvatyevna makes excuses.
Suddenly she remembers: her friend was also beaten by her husband, but she was able to escape to a crisis center in Vologda.
Not only women are hiding there, but also old people - young people are now making fun of them so much for the sake of an apartment! But this is in cities, we don’t have that.
Love till death
The only cafe “Prival” opened in Pogorelovo recently. On weekends, guys and girls order the most popular song there, “My favorite Vologda girls, unique Vologda girls” - and a bottle (stores close at 21.00). The older generation is more conservative and still drinks in garages. During such garage meetings, Anatoly Ugryumov shared his plans with the men and talked about suicide. No one at work suspected this.
After Anatoly was fired from the state farm four years ago, he got a job as a tractor driver in the road service in the village of Fominskoye. Road builder Nikolai Fedorovich repeats: they kept Ugryumov out of pity. Although, in general, there are few candidates for such a position - they can be called to work at any time of the day, and they pay pennies. “So we have to pick up all this garbage,” explains Nikolai Fedorovich. Ugryumov was a “staff member” for the boss; he “did not know” his family.
How could this happen? We must start with upbringing, with roots, so to speak. What is inherent in a person is what is in him! By character, he is like a small child who was the last to be raised in the family. A little bit and you get hysterical and get worked up. In terms of work, I’ll tell you straight, you couldn’t send one person, you couldn’t redo everything after him, my mother was vigorous.
On the walls in the little room where the crew usually takes a smoke break are hung maps of the Soviet Union (two) and posters for the competitions “Goat and Ram of the Year,” “Pig and Goose of the Year,” and a competition among cows and heifers. Nikolai Fedorovich debunks the myth that Tolya shot himself because he was fired. No, they didn’t fire me, although they tried!
But I defended him in front of the director! He still has to feed his family, it’s poor, it’s poor, he earns about 10 thousand a month. Why is life so painfully difficult for him? What the hell do you need? His life was oh-oh-oh, Tolka’s was.
After the accident, Ugryumov was only sent on paid leave. As Nikolai Fedorovich says, “get smart.” But Ugryumov drank for the entire month.
Ugryumov’s tractor now stands alone in the hangar; there is no one to sit on it yet.
But Valentina's working tools - machines for milking cows - are already in use, they are used by milkmaid Zhanna. He says that on the farm in Bykovo they looked up to Valentina. She always won machine milking competitions.
A mechanic, two milkmaids Zhanna and a cowgirl on the farm in Bykovo, where the murdered Valentina worked. Photo: Ekaterina Fomina / Novaya
The farm is humid, dark, and smells tartly of manure. There are 200 heifers in the pens, each with a sign with the name: Reform, Eyelash, Remarque... The cowgirl collects manure with a scraper and mockingly throws out: “Run around the farm for seven hours to collect shit - do you want to try?”
Chubby Zhanna once ran away from her husband in Pogorelovo from the neighboring Babushkinsky district and now tells the same thing about herself and Valya: there were constant fights at home, before work they covered bruises with foundation, at work they were not used to “showing their mood.” Valentina, she recalls, came every day with a smile on her face (even when it was bruised), sat down under the cow and started a song.
Just as it doesn’t matter which Pogorelov we are in, it doesn’t matter which milkmaid talks about her bruises - everyone has such a story.
“It happened to my sister: I came and beat her husband! - the cowgirl recalls. - The district police officer refused to open a case - there were no deaths, he said. Well, to Valka... You can’t interfere in someone else’s life.”
Photo: Ekaterina Fomina / Novaya
Unlike the road workers, everyone on the farm knew about the Ugryumov family. Every evening, drunken Tolya came to the farm to check on his wife. Sometimes he ran after her with a pitchfork.
He was jealous of our mechanics! This is called male menopause, already bzhik in the male body,” the older milkmaids nod knowingly.
And sometimes, it would happen that a drunken man would go limp, sit down on the sofa in the utility room and repeat: “I love Valyushka more than anyone.” And the milkmaids are touched: “He had such love.”
“Don’t ever have the fashion to touch me!”
Tolya had this in mind, to shoot himself,” Lena says casually. “Once it’s planned, it’s already done anyway,” and throws up his hands. “I persuaded him: you can pay off your debts little by little, rather than shoot yourself.”
Lena Ignatievskaya was the last to see Tolya and Valya alive. The evening before the murder and an hour before it, she drank with them.
Of course, if I had known that this would happen, I would have stayed with them in the morning. Or maybe she wouldn’t have left and he would have shot me, who knows. Which have not be avoided. I walk around and can’t believe they’re not there. Okay, I say, at least for myself... But why her, Valya?
We are sitting in the kitchen. Lena - dyed blonde, plump, in a pink robe - sits down heavily on a stool, leans her elbows on the windowsill, where for some reason there is a lampshade from a chandelier. There is a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, there are no curtains on the window.
Lena knew the Ugryumov family for a long time - she worked on the farm with Valya, sometimes breaking up fights between her and her husband.
Sometimes Vika would come running: dad was beating mom. I'll run, yell at him, and whip him. Once I scolded him and he walked around with a bruise. Afraid of me.
About a year ago, Lena went on maternity leave, and communication faded away. On the evening of March 14, Valentina called Lena: Tolya once borrowed 150 rubles for a check and offered to return it in the same “currency.” We gathered and sat down. The next morning, Lena took her two children and went to the Gloomy family to get a hangover. While Valya went to get a bottle, Tolya baked pancakes and hung out the laundry.
Lena repeats as usual: everything was fine that day, there wasn’t even a row! And she herself is surprised at this. He convinces that Ugryumov “wasn’t drunk at all, he was thinking with his head.”
He was afraid that if he shot himself, she would live with someone, it was a pity to give it up. And I know that she wouldn’t live with anyone! - Lena says with offense. - If she cried, she would cry, you can understand, a husband is a husband. But we must think first of all about the children!
Lena herself grew up in a large family. One of her brothers drowned, her younger sister “went to wander around” and left three children with her mother. The mother drank and handed over her daughter’s children to an orphanage. But a year later she took it away - “after all, it’s mine.”
Recently my sister returned, pregnant again. So now she’s renting a house somewhere in the village. I can’t imagine what I’ll have to live on, I’m already giving birth in July.
Lena has three daughters. Thirteen-year-old Karina “from a Ukrainian” who worked here, “but he was kicked out when Karina was two years old.” Then Lena’s friend Kolya started visiting Lena. “I still need to live.”
The Ignatievsky family. Lena is the last person to see the Ugryumovs alive. Photo: Ekaterina Fomina / Novaya
Yulia and nine-month-old Lera are Kolya’s daughters. Both were not planned: “I just didn’t have time to go to an abortion.”
One day Kolya almost stabbed Lena. “There was a bit of a party,” and Tolya Ugryumov told Kolya that his Lenka was talking to one person on the farm.
I was sleeping, and he was attacking me with a knife - I woke up just in time! The local police officer has arrived - write a statement. So why should I? Where should I plant it? I went to the hospital with a knife and had to fix it. They judged him and gave him a year of probation.
Kolya didn’t touch Lena for a year. But…
As soon as the agreement ended, he again began to beat me a little. Then I’ll take whatever I can get my hands on and start lashing. Then I didn’t touch it - beauty! I say: never have the fashion to touch me.
Little Lera crawls along the corridor, turns into the kitchen, there is an obstacle ahead - a threshold.
“Crawl to your mother,” Lerka begins to whine. - Don’t freak out, let’s go to mom.
Yulia tries to carry Lera over the barrier, but Lena stops her: “You’re being lazy, let him do it yourself.”
Oh mom, she peed herself again.
Kolya, short and shriveled, comes out into the kitchen to smoke, wearing a T-shirt with a menacing tiger on it. Lena looks at him lovingly:
You know, men are men.
Kolya stews the bull. Little Lera is in her arms gnawing on a plug for a water pipe, which she grabbed on the windowsill.
Now they’ll wait until 40 days, and then, God forbid, something else happens and they’ll switch,” Lena says cheerfully. - As they say, if they screw it up, it means the person is alive. And let them screw me over - that means I’m alive.
P.S. A rumor spread in Pogorelovo: the deaf and mute Vanka was taken not by his mother’s aunts, but by the police - to the Totemsky detention center. His prints were allegedly found on the gun.
75 years ago, on March 22, 1943, the Nazi executioners barbarously, mercilessly and inhumanly destroyed and burned to the ground the modest Belarusian village of Khatyn. Together with all its inhabitants. 149 people died, including 75 children under 16 years of age. Seven-year-old Viktor Zhelobkovich and twelve-year-old Anton Baranovsky were miraculously able to escape and survive in the blazing hell of hatred. The burnt and wounded children were picked up and came out by residents of neighboring villages. 56-year-old blacksmith Joseph Kaminsky got out of the inferno. Among the bodies of his fellow villagers, he found his wounded son. The boy died in the arms of his unfortunate father.
9093 - this figure now appears on the title page of the electronic database db.narb.by, created under the auspices of the National Archives of Belarus and containing information about Belarusian villages burned by the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War, in whole and in part, with and without inhabitants. The figure is constantly changing - upward, because the work to clarify this mournful list does not stop. The collection of information is carried out not only by professional scientists, but also by patriots, enthusiasts, passionate about the history of the Motherland, including Minsk engineer and local historian Alexander Pavlyukovich. On the eve of the tragic date of the death of Khatyn, he talks in his materials about the equally bitter fate of its suffering sisters - the burned villages of the Minsk region.
PHOTO BY VITALY GIL
Flame of Zamoshya
Summer 1942. In the vicinity of the legendary Lake Palik, during the war - the center of the partisan movement, detachments formed from encirclement and local residents were just beginning to appear. During this period, their operations were mainly in the nature of ambushes on roads and attacks on small German garrisons. And, in order to prevent the partisan struggle from unfolding, the occupiers actually introduced collective responsibility for residents of villages close to the sites of clashes. Zamoshye, Borisov district, was located about 10 kilometers from the town of Zembin and about halfway from it to the lake. The tragedy of Zamoshya was most directly connected with the tragedy that then occurred in Zembin.
Memoirs of Anatoly Iosifovich Yatskovsky, born in 1930,from the village of Zamoshe:
“It was in the summer. A car with Germans was driving near the village, and they were shot at. Our locals organized a partisan detachment here. The commander of the detachment was teacher Zhukovsky. The Germans jumped out of the car and killed several partisans. One was caught alive and taken to Zembin. The next morning the Germans surround our village. They burned at one end and at the other. They set fire to people and drive them out of their homes. We were all herded to the highway, and the village was burning. The Germans and police from Zembin arrived. We picked up the cars and drove to Zembin. They drove us into the church, and there we spent the night. Then they began to take me out of the church. They brought him to the partisan whom they had captured. He was badly beaten. They asked him: “Did this one have connections with the partisans, did this one bake bread?” They already knew who was connected with the partisans. School principal Zuborenko was the first to be taken out. His whole family was killed: his children and his wife. They shot behind the church. The rest were released and we went home. They came to a bare field and began to build dugouts...”
Each witness saw and remembered those troubled days in his own way, highlighting what was most etched in his childhood memory.
Story by Anna Grigorievna Shevyarnovskaya, born in 1933, resident of Zamoshye:
This crime is also evidenced by partisan documents, which contain the following entry: “In July 1942, German barbarians, having entered the village of Zamoshye, completely burned 82 houses and shot 16 families, including 6 infants...”
Relatives of the Kaminskys
People who lived through those days filled with fear and horror were always unable to talk about their experiences without emotion and tears.
Valentina Konstantinovna Yukhnevich, former resident of Zamoshye:
This was in June. The Germans surrounded our village and began firing from both sides. They surrounded us with machine guns. They started driving away from the cemetery. They forced everyone to their knees and forced them to crawl, while they fired machine guns over their heads. Everything was burning, and they were chasing us. The women and children were taken to Zembin, while the men were out haymaking. Whichever of them was found was shot. In Zembin we sat in church. Three days. And they only gave me something to drink. Someone grabbed the grains on the way, and they gave us a grain each. And we, like little sparrows, took one grain at a time and ate it. We were taken out of the church one by one. Mom was the last one to come out with us. We held on to my mother's skirt. Nobody knew us in the village - that’s what saved us. Mom was asked where her man was. Mom “deceived” me, she said, in 1930 they deported me. They: “Gut, lady.” And they started beating my mother with bizuns. We were released, but 85 people were then shot...”
Valentina Konstantinovna recalls that during the war she could have died many times, but fate protected her. Her mother’s sister, Adela, was married to Joseph Kaminsky from Khatyn. When everything in Zamoshye was burned, in the fall of 1942 Valya and her grandmother went to the Kaminskys in Khatyn to spend the winter. And the mother remained with her son in a dugout in Zamoshye. They stayed in Khatyn all winter, and in early spring, just before the burning of the village, for some reason my grandmother really wanted to go home to Zamoshye. No matter how much they tried to persuade her to live here, she and her granddaughter left shortly before the tragedy...
We pray for peace
Already today, stories about the tragedy that occurred near the walls of the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Zembin in the summer of 1942 have been confirmed. During construction work, human remains were discovered here. They lay chaotically, not in single graves, and shallowly, which indicates a burial from the time of the Great Patriotic War.
The rector of the Church of the Holy Archangel Michael, Archpriest Andrei Kapultsevich, says:
In general, dark days for the residents of Zembin (where historically people of different faiths always coexisted peacefully, with an Orthodox church, a church and a synagogue operating at the same time) came from the very first days of Hitler’s occupation. On August 18, 1941, policemen and Germans who arrived from Borisov drove the civilian Jewish population of Zembin to a pre-dug ditch and shot 927 people there, including children. This place is located 2 kilometers north of the village, near the road to Begoml. There is now a monument and memorial plaque installed there.
Over its long history, the Zemba church itself has experienced a lot: desolation, devastation and destruction... At first, until the end of the 19th century, there was a wooden church in the village, but a fire in 1900 destroyed it. The brick church was erected and consecrated in 1908. During the years of struggle against religion, the temple gradually fell into disrepair, and after the war it was completely closed and used as a warehouse for agricultural products. Another cruel episode in the history of the shrine was the filming of a feature film in 1965, when a T-34 tank was driven into the church according to the script. As a result, the altar wall and the altar were destroyed, and the ancient churchyard was damaged. “SB” spoke about that unkind and offensive episode for the national culture in the article “Zembinskoe Kino” in March 2003.
And only in our time the church actually rose from the ruins and became one of the historical and architectural pearls of the Minsk region. Again, not without the help of caring and generous people - donors. As Father Andrei Kapultsevich says, those names are unlikely to tell us anything, but the Lord knows them all. By the way, the BATE football club provided great assistance in the restoration. It should be noted that the spiritual and organizational activities of the priest himself also played a significant role in the restoration of the shrine. I would like to hope that through joint efforts, a cross in memory of the villagers tortured by the Nazis will also be erected and consecrated. We haven't forgotten anything.
Alexander PAVLYUKOVICH.
.... Saturday, November 27, 1943. A terrible misfortune hung over Krasukha. On a bridge spanning a wide stream, not far from the house of Alexei Dmitrievich Dmitriev, an explosion overturned a passenger car. General Ferch, who was riding in it, was wounded and taken away towards Vereteni. Who could do this? Guerrillas usually carry out their sabotage far from populated areas, since civilians cannot be put at risk. Our own people, the Krasukhinskys, could not decide on this - they knew what awaited the residents of their native village. Residents of neighboring Porkhov villages had nothing to do with this explosion. As for the partisans, the command of the brigades operating near Krasukha conducted a thorough investigation and found out that no one received such an assignment and no one committed sabotage in Krasukha. According to another version, the explosion was committed by the boy Senka, nicknamed Lark, who decided to avenge his father who died at the front, for the pioneer leader Shura, and for all the Krasukhin residents. One way or another, one thing is clear: the Nazis took revenge on civilians for their defeat on the huge Soviet-German front, for the failure of their plans. Perhaps this was the most likely reason for their raid on Krasukha on this gray November morning. At the hour when the explosion occurred, many of the residents were working on the threshing floor, threshing wheat. Feeling bad, the foreman told people to disperse quickly. But it was already too late. The trucks walked right through the virgin snow around the village. The soldiers jumped from them at low speed and ran to the huts. Alexey Dmitrievich Dmitriev, noticing something was wrong on the street, left the yard, and, seeing the officer, headed towards him. -The residents are not to blame here, I can vouch for it with my head. The officer gave the order to the soldiers, and they pierced Dmitriev with a bayonet. This was the introduction to the monstrous tragedy that took place a little later. In 1943, in the darkness of a blizzard, Dogs and kites came running into my village. Three hundred innocent souls were driven out into the snow. Three hundred people were pushed into the barn's mouth! In a helmet, like a two-horned demon, Hauptmann barked: “Show the way to the lairs of Par-ti-zan! Three hours to think. Dry and zero minutes. If you do it, forgiveness, if you don’t, it’s kaput!”
No! Not a word about the squad. Frozen old and small. And the Enemy did not hear a sound about mercy. The flames splashed in the roof, the children of hell rose up... He didn’t hear - and he won’t hear. The dead are silent. Only memory has not forgotten the sorrowful days: It was, it was, it was On my land. On a gray and tearful land, Shedding its blood, Incorruptible, proud, formidable In a righteous battle. Everyone in whom there is darkness, who is deaf to the world, should know that Russia, the mother of Krasukha, is better not to frighten!
The Nazis rushed to the houses and began to set them on fire. Residents tried to drive out their livestock and save some property. The executioners beat people with rifle butts, shot and stabbed them, and threw the things they carried into the fire. The survivors began to be driven to the end of the village. Nina Mikhailovna managed to crawl away along the ditch. Already outside the village I caught up with Zhenya Pavlova, the Komsomol leader. Half an hour ago she was driven with everyone to the threshing floor. Her father advised her to run away: he thought that they would be driven to Germany, and Zhenya had a proud and obstinate character - it was not for her to be a slave. Listening to her father, she jumped into the ditch. They also shot at her, but missed. From the side, she now saw how the Germans drove people into the threshing floor, how they dragged boards, straw and cans of fuel to the large gate. It dawned on her: the Nazis want to burn people. But she knew that on the back side of the threshing floor there were small doors into which waste was thrown out during threshing. Zhenya crawled back. But she was noticed and pierced with a bayonet. And people were still being led to the threshing floors and pushed towards open doors. Two young Old Russian refugees tried not to go, but they were thrown into the threshing floor by force. Maria Lukinichna Pavlova, who was walking with the children - eleven-year-old Nikolai, six-year-old Vitya, ten-year-old Galya and seven-year-old Nadya, momentarily lost her children - they were carried away by the crowd of people. At the same moment, a strong blow knocked her off her feet. She lost consciousness and no longer saw or heard anything. And in two barns things were coming to their terrible end. People were beaten with rifle butts and shot at with machine guns. The defenseless were not only killed, they were also mocked. The officer demanded to indicate the location of the partisans. Everyone was silent. The only sounds that could be heard were the screams of young children who did not understand that they should not cry, and sometimes the voices of mothers asking for mercy at least for their young children. People were silent, and time passed. And now they are boarding up the doors, pouring fuel on the gates and walls, bringing burning torches, and soon both threshing floors turn into tall torches. Moans, cries and screams rushed through the raging flames and smoke. The soldiers responded to them with merciless machine gun fire. And Maria Lukinichna Pavlova came to her senses when both threshing floors were burning down. With crazy eyes she looked at everything that remained of the creatures most dear to her. Seeing poorly and not realizing anything, she crawled to the side. Nina Mikhailova, who met her in the neighboring village, barely recognized Maria Lukinichna. At night there was a bloody glow over Krasukha. The Nazis cordoned off the village, and then mined the approaches to it, so that the people of the surrounding villages would not soon learn about this atrocity. It is unlikely that it will be possible to restore all the names of the unfortunate people who became victims of the Nazis on this day. The sad list is not complete: the names of all the dead citizens of Krasukha, especially its young residents, have not been clarified. What about refugees from neighboring villages? But there were also guests from Leningrad, whose summer vacation ended so tragically. What about the refugees of Staraya Russa and other Novgorod cities and villages? Almost three hundred people... Honest, modest workers of the earth who dreamed of a peaceful, calm life. You climbed the hill, Sorrowful and thunderous. You're tired, your bare feet hurt. You are made of stone, You are made of dead granite, You are dumb, But your soul is an alarm.
The woman returned to her native ashes. There is no village, only an evil wind sweeps gray ash along the road and vegetable gardens. The trees are charred. Dilapidated chimneys. A lonely willow bowed its branches mournfully. But the lonely barefoot woman who came to the dead Krasukha does not notice anything. She sees in front of her two terrible threshing floors, in which her loved ones died painfully... In her eyes there is ineradicable grief, but at the same time, incomparable courage, of which only a Russian woman is capable. Its author is sculptor Antonina Petrovna Usachenko. She, like many, learned about the tragedy of Krasukha from Ivan Kurchavov’s essay “The Tragic and Courageous Krasukha,” published in 1968 in Komsomolskaya Pravda. It was decided to erect a monument in Krasukha. 34 projects were nominated for the competition. Usachenko's work was recognized as the best. It was brought for viewing to Porkhov, received unanimous approval from Porkhov residents, and fundraising began in the area for the construction of the monument. Why did luck fall to Usachenko among many works? Maybe because she reflected her grief in this sculpture? Her father and two brothers died at the front, and her older sister was driven into fascist slavery. In 1968, on Sunday June 21, this sculpture was installed. In 1970, a documentary film “There Was a Village of Krasukha Was on Earth” appeared, which was shown for a long time on November 27 at the Pobeda cinema. The gray-black ashes of Krasukha and thousands of other villages burned by the Nazis, the groans of people being killed and burned alive called for harsh and fair vengeance . In 1946, a resident of the Porkhov district, Yakov Grigorievich Kuznetsov, was invited to witness the Nuremberg trials, who knew well about the tragedy of Krasukha, which was burned a month after his native village of Kuznetsovo, located 20 km from Krasukha, was destroyed. At the end of October 1943, the Nazis arrived in his village. Many people were shot, among whom was his eldest son. Miraculously, both he and his youngest son survived, later joining the partisans. There they also met a boy from Leningrad, who survived due to the fact that at the moment when the Nazis entered their hut, they were playing hide and seek with the boys, and they did not notice him. The oldest of the burned villagers was 108 years old, and the youngest was 4 months old. And on that day, 47 people died in his village. From the family of Yakov Grigorievich - his wife is six months pregnant, his son Nikolai is 16 years old, his son Petya is 9 years old and his daughter-in-law, his brother’s wife with two children. No one can alleviate the grief of Yakov Grigorievich, the surviving Krasukha residents and many, many thousands of people. There is no doctor in the world who can heal a serious mental wound. And people who have experienced what fascism is, and who know about the past war only from books, memoirs, and films, do not want this to happen again. The cry of the suffering but surviving Beauty, Seemingly destroyed to the ground, can still be heard... The old mother, frozen with grief, was a witness to that calvary. But what will she tell - mute? There is only grief on the face and dust nearby. I read the silent question in her eyes: “Why did we have such a fate?” Tears petrified in my eyes. The closer the hill, the clearer the bells Through the years, from those ominous days, Like the sighs of Mother Earth, like moans, Overcoming obstacles along the way, They come more clearly and loudly. But what is everything here consigned to oblivion? No one hears the moans why? What, we need repetition of bitter lessons, is there salvation in them? You take a closer look at this hill, Where the symbols of three concrete pillars have grown at a distance over the fields of Evil, And remember WHAT has hidden over the years, What WILL HAPPEN if we forget with you, - What fate befell the fathers... Stand here with your eyes closed, And everything will emerge, and again everything will come up, What COULD BE still with all of us Behind those, behind the ominous pillars... Let the memory of those pillars survive. And the wind blows over the beautiful clouds, the bent old mother is silent, as if she hears the whistle of an ominous whip... “Why don’t you live peacefully in the world?” - A crane screams from a nest near three pillars. (Victor Fokin)
Background.
In the 20th of September 1941, on the western borders of the Chekhov district of the Moscow region, a defense line began to form, which a little later would be called the “Stremilovsky line”.
Spas-temnya-Dubrovka-Karmashovka-Mukovnino-Begichevo-Stremilovo-Khorosino
In the fall, the fascist army launched frantic activity in the Volokolamsk direction. The Germans were rushing to Moscow. Despite the fierce resistance of the Soviet troops, the enemies were approaching the capital along the Volokolamsk Highway. Then the Soviet command decided to conduct a diversionary maneuver at the Stremilovsky line of defense - to go on the offensive.
At that time, the 17th Infantry Division held the defense at the Stremilovsky line. The division was formed on 07/02/1941 in Moscow as the 17th Moscow Rifle Division of the People's Militia (Moskvoretsky District), it included mainly workers and employees of the Vladimir Ilyich plant, tannery, Goznak factory, worsted spinning factory named after M.I. Kalinin and some other enterprises of the Moskvoretsky district. In a word, workers with no combat experience and minimal preparation for combat operations. Before the start of the fighting in Spas-Demensk, the division had about 11,000 people.
The division fought its way back along the Warsaw Highway. The soldiers fought off attacks by German tanks and were subjected to brutal bombing. By October 25, 1941, 1,420 people remained alive.
Also, to strengthen the defense of the Stremilovsky line, the front command sent the 26th Tank Brigade, commanded by Colonel Mikhail Ilyich Levsky.
Leonovo during the Second World War.
The village of Leonovo burned twice, the first time before the start of the fighting on November 14-15, 1941, being in no man's land.
The fact of setting fire to a village in the absence of active hostilities between the warring parties at that time aroused particular interest and additional archival research was carried out on it, which gave an unexpected result.
A resident of the village of Leonovo, Elizaveta Ivanovna Dmitrieva, said that before the war the village of Leonovo consisted of several settlements with interesting names - Gradskaya, Zarechka, Mount Bulychev - and was popularly called Raskidaevka.
Scheme of the village of Leonovo during the Second World War. Compiled by village resident E.I. Dmitrieva.
From the memoirs of E.I. Dmitrieva: “We hid from the Fritz in the morning, and in the evening our scouts from Khorosin and Rastovka came... Tunaevo and Markovo were already occupied. ... The village of Leonovo is on fire. There are eight houses in the Zarechka settlement, two houses on Bulychev Mountain and two houses on Gradskaya Sloboda. A total of 12 houses burned down. Everyone would have burned, but the arsonists - two shepherds who tended our flocks in the summer - Viktor Fedorovich Ivanov drove away. They were persuaded by Klavdia Ivanovna Pashutina to do such a thankless task... Without properly explaining it to the residents, they were deceived and told that there would be a strong battle and that their houses would burn down. People got scared, dropped everything and ran away, as they say, in what their mother gave birth to. And there is nowhere to return - ashes. Then the Germans occupied the village, and there were still 9 houses left before the attack on November 14, 1941.”
It turns out that only one house survived on Zarechka - that of Ivan Pashutin, the father of the same Claudia Ivanovna Pashutina who was able to “persuade the shepherds.” It turns out that during the systematic arson of the said settlement, the daughter averted trouble from her home.
Who was Klava Pashutina - a traitor?
Now there is almost no information about her, and not many people remember her. And those who remember call her “Komsomol member” and “partisan”. However, in the documents of TsAMO, literature, as well as in studies on the activities of the Ugod-factory partisans and special forces of the NKVD, there is no information about Pashutina.
Why did a “Komsomol member” or “partisan” lead the arson of her native village?
Light on the events that took place in the first half of November 1941 is shed by a document discovered in the Central Academy of Medical Sciences of the Russian Federation, from which the classification of secrecy was recently removed. For a better understanding of the topic, I will provide a copy of this document in full. It should be noted that the village of Leonovo was located precisely in the zone of defense and combat operations of formations and units of the 43rd Army of the Western Front.
"SECRET
In order to ensure freedom of maneuver for troops in the army’s defense zone, as well as to prevent possible cases of using the population for espionage
I ORDER:
1. Evict all residents from the frontline zone to a depth of 15 km. The head of the Army's Political Department should negotiate with local authorities to organize the eviction.
2. Commanders of formations should prepare to burn populated areas in their defense zones, if necessary, depending on the situation.
Appoint responsible commanders and the required number of fighters to burn down each populated area so that not a single house serves as a refuge for the enemy.
Provide each team with flammable materials.
3. Submit a plan for organizing the burning of populated areas, if necessary, on 8.11.41.
Commander of the 43rd Army, Major General Golubev.
Member of the Military Council, Divisional Commissar Shabalov.
Chief of Staff of the 43rd Army, Colonel Bogolyubov.
Otp. 24 copies Correct: beginning. secret part, technician - int. 2 ranks of Fists.
(The document is located: TsAMO RF F. 208.Op.2511. D.69. L.21. - V.S.).
This means that Claudia Pashutina, most likely, carried out the orders of the Soviet leadership, and simply felt sorry for her father’s house.
In Leonovo, after November 1941, there was only one surviving house; it has survived to this day - this is the former home of the Tiksov family, who moved from Estonia before the revolution to work as laborers for the landowner.
Battle for the villages of Leonovo and Tunaevo.
Before the start of the offensive, the troops of the 17th Infantry Division were located at the edge of the forest. They were separated from the villages of Leonovo and Tunaevo by a huge field, as if sloping down towards the villages. The entire field was covered with freshly fallen snow about half a meter high. Not far from Leonovo, almost in the center of the field, there was a small brick school. After entering the field, Soviet troops were in full view.
The field separating the 17th Infantry Division from the village of Leonovo. 2011.
On the morning of November 14, artillery preparation began. The snow-white field was covered with black craters from shell explosions. Soviet artillerymen suppressed the fire of two fascist batteries.
The Red Army soldiers, supported by tanks from the 26th brigade, quickly advanced towards the villages.
By that time, the fascist invaders left Leonovo and Tunaevo without a fight. However, on the way to the school, our fighters ran into an ambush. Several fascists settled in the basement of the school, punched embrasures in the brickwork and fired at point-blank range with heavy machine guns.
Infantrymen bombarded the school with anti-tank grenades. But a lot of our soldiers remained lying in the ravine in front of the school.
Ruins of a school. 2011.
By 12 o'clock our troops occupied the villages of Leonovo and Tunaevo, and the enemy retreated to Maryino and Melikhovoye. However, the villages did not remain ours for long.
The next day, November 15, 1941, 15 enemy tanks and a German infantry regiment, with air support, struck the weakly protected right flank. The blow was unexpected, the enemy's superiority in military equipment was significant. Soviet soldiers were unable to fight back and retreated to their original positions.
We heard another version from one of the local residents: on November 15, the 26th Tank Brigade mistakenly came under Soviet artillery fire, and the Nazis could only take advantage of the moment and reoccupy the villages.
Bottom line.
Due to the superiority of enemy military equipment or due to a mistake by Soviet artillerymen, Soviet troops were unable to hold the villages captured during the offensive and remained in the same place. Moreover, in two days of fighting, the 17th Infantry Division and the 26th Tank Brigade lost about 600 people killed, wounded and missing. In these battles, the commander of the 26th tank brigade, Colonel M.I., died. Levsky.
At the cost of hundreds of human lives and dozens of burned villages, the diversionary maneuver was successful and the Nazi offensive on the city of Podolsk was thwarted. After the battle near Leonov-Tunaev, German troops no longer tried to go on the offensive, and on December 25, under the pressure of Soviet troops, they rolled back to the west.
The two-month period of stay of the 17th Infantry Division and the 26th Tank Brigade at the Stremilovsky line was full of dramatic and tragic events characteristic of the first year of the war. The archival documents contain a lot of all kinds of operational reports, orders, certificates about the successful raids of our reconnaissance officers, about the effective actions of artillerymen and anti-aircraft gunners, and about the fact that the soldiers have done a lot of work to strengthen the defense line.
There is no less other information: about the failures that befell, about tactical mistakes, about serious losses among personnel.
Memory.
Not many residents remained in Leonovo and Tunaev after severe trials. But they returned and restored the economy destroyed by the war.
Imagine the surprise of local residents when, in the post-war years, a monument-grave in a meadow near the school was destroyed and the remains of the soldiers were taken for burial in Stremilovo.
E.I. Dmitrieva describes: “In Bulychev there is a monument, in Vysokov there is both a village and a defense line, in Begichev there is a monument, in Stremilov there are two monuments. What a shame it was: where there was a war, there were battles, everything burned down completely, and the monuments were removed. They celebrated Memorial Day there, and we???
But justice has triumphed! In the 80s, through the efforts of local residents, a memorial obelisk was opened on the ruins of the school. Now there is a mass grave here, and the number of fighters in it continues to grow. Thanks to search teams, there are fewer and fewer unburied soldiers left.
A memorial obelisk near the ruins of a school in the village of Leonovo. 2011.
Inscriptions on the memorial and tombstones:
1941 17th People's Militia Division
Ten unknown soldiers.
Junior sergeant P. I. Lukyanov, born in 1918, junior sergeant F. P. Pugach, born in 1917, three unknown pilots.
To the unknown heroes who fell for their homeland.
To the unknown defenders of the fatherland.
To the unknown defenders of the fatherland.
Memorial plaque on the ruins of the school. 2011.
Students of the 30s:
Gorshkov S.Ya.
Gorshkov V.Ya.
Makurin A.S.
Salyankin A.P.
Chernyshev A.E.
1941-1945
Korotkov G.
Dmitriev A.P.
Gorbachev V.K.
Velikanov D.
Soldatov M.I.
Makurin S.S.
Makhov N.D.
Pashutin P.
Semenov M.
Lyskin V.
No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten.
The village of Leonovo-Tunaevo was liberated from the Nazi invaders by units of the 17th Infantry Division of the People's Militia of the Moskvoretsky District of Moscow.
Website materials used: muzejpamyati.narod.ru
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