Last Sunday, June 22, marked what is called in Russia the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow. It marks the day that the Germans first invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, in an operation codenamed Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in history. It opened the Eastern Front and broke the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty signed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939.
That date in 1941 coincided with the Orthodox commemoration of All the Saints of the Russian Lands—as it did again last Sunday.
A woman outside her burning house. August 18, 1941
A barn. No grain within—but souls still breathing,
They sit in silence, sensing fate draw near.
Outside the oaken door, the “judges” seething—
Inside, the villagers await in fear.
An old man wraps his coat around his grandson,
And strokes the tousled hair upon his head…
His heart is crushed with pain—such bitter ransom:
Two sons, his breadwinners, are lost and dead.
(They perished on the war’s first day, near Brest).
Their mother, grieving, followed them in death.
A daughter-in-law served—front-line nurse at best—
No word from her. Is she still drawing breath?
He’d vowed to guard his grandson, keep him living…
But now? What promise holds against such theft?
Dragged from their beds at night, without forgiving,
The Fritzes herded all the town that’s left.
Inside—the sticky fear; outside—cold laughter.
The stench of kerosene begins to swell…
The old man’s mind ignites with dread at after—
Could it be they’d be burned alive as well?
One moment more—and in his soul a raging
Fist clenched in wrath, though helpless he remained.
Then flames leapt high, the crowd outside engaging—
The barn with screams and moans became blood-stained.
The “judges” cheered amid the fiery slaying,
Exulting in that madness without name.
The old man and his grandson, silent, praying,
Were swallowed whole by sacrificial flame.
In that barn burned Matt and grandpa…
And up to heaven rose their cries.
A pipe laments the mournful drama
Of those who died in torment’s sighs.
(Tatian Ovchinnikova. Living Flame)
A sign on the M-9 “Baltia” Highway
The Belarusian village of Khatyn became one of the symbols of the Great Patriotic War (Word War II), embodying the crimes of fascism. All across the vast Russian plain—from Brest to Moscow—there were hundreds of such villages burned to the ground. Today, only inscriptions on memorial signs, road markers, and commemorative crosses remain to remind us of them.
One such monument stands at the 380th kilometer of the federal highway “Baltia”, near the turnoff to the ancient Russian town of Toropets. The inscription on the yellow information board reads:
HERE, more than 500 peaceful residents were shot by SS punitive forces, and 14 villages were burned down.
People! Remember them.
October 1941.
The residents of Toropets and the Zapadnaya Dvina District of the Tver Region are the last people to entertain any fantasies along the lines of, “How great it would’ve been if the Germans had won.” The German occupation here lasted only four and a half months, but the memory of that time remains vivid to this day:
The very first thing they did was to hunt down Communists and Jews. They were taken outside the city (Toropets) to a barrack at the flax-processing plant. There, they also herded anyone who had fallen under suspicion in any way. Men were forced to dig “fortifications.” Then the others were led to those pits and executed.
In front of their mothers, children had their veins cut, or were thrown still alive into the pits. Some were even buried alive.”1
In front of their mothers, children had their veins cut, or were thrown still alive into the pits. Some were even buried alive
From these atrocities to the burning of entire villages—there is but one step.
At the Nuremberg Trials, lawyer Telford Taylor delivered the following statement:
“The atrocities committed by the armed forces and other organizations of the Third Reich in the East were so staggeringly monstrous that the human mind can scarcely grasp them…
“I believe that analysis will show that this was not merely madness or bloodlust. On the contrary, there was a method and a purpose.
“These atrocities occurred as a result of carefully calculated orders and directives, issued before or during the invasion of the Soviet Union, and they formed a coherent and logical system.”2
Germans burn down a house in Khatyn
This, in fact, is the answer to those who claim that the burning of villages was merely the Germans' response to partisan activity. Nazi documents and directives unequivocally show that the population of the occupied territories was marked for extermination.
Not all at once, and not everywhere—but it was only a matter of time.
Nazi documents and directives unequivocally show: the population of the occupied territories was marked for extermination.
Even before the war, in 1940, Hitler clearly and explicitly articulated the objective:
“We are obligated to exterminate the population—that is part of our mission… We must develop the technique of depopulation. If you ask me what I mean by depopulation, I mean the extermination of entire racial units. That is what I intend to implement—in crude terms, that is my task.
“Nature is cruel, and therefore we have the right to be cruel… Without a doubt, I have the right to exterminate millions of members of inferior races who breed like vermin.”3
The Wehrmacht soldiers and their allies were simply carrying out their Führer’s plan with methodical precision.
Had there been no partisans, had our forces not resisted even when encircled, had the Germans managed to take Moscow, people would have been burned in ovens, just as they were burned in Dachau and Buchenwald.
Hitler’s forces in a Belorussian village
The inhuman creatures in mouse-grey uniforms came to kill!
“Take the children and flee into the forest! Punitive troops are coming!”
This was the warning given to the peasants of a village near Stara Toropa by a German soldier who, despite the pervasive propaganda of the Reich, managed to remain human.4
Across the road from the yellow memorial sign mentioned earlier, near the turnoff to the village of Selyane, stands a striking monument: a symbolic remnant of a stove, with a charred corner from a burned-down house. It was erected on May 7, 1995, in memory of the residents of villages burned and shot by punitive units during the Nazi occupation of the western regions of what is now Tver Oblast (then Kalinin Oblast).
A granite plaque bears the inscription:
“Bow your head, traveler.
Here once stood a peaceful Soviet village—one of 42 in the district that were burned to the ground on October 19–20, 1941.
During those days, 518 of our fellow countrymen—children, the elderly, and women—were killed by Nazi punitive detachments.”5
A woman over the remains of her loved ones at the ashes of her native home. Photo: A Borisov/TACC.
How they killed the village of Selyanye
Retold by Anna Ivanovna (Kudryavtseva; born 1920)
That morning, October 19th… I was hurrying home. On the way, I met the neighbor's little girl:
“Oh, Aunt Anya, they’re shooting at something!”
The gunshots really were becoming more frequent—sometimes muffled, sometimes sharp.
“Probably taking the cows again,” I thought.
But the farther we walked—almost ran—through the village, the more it became clear: something was wrong. Then we saw it: houses bursting into flames one after another.
I rushed into my own house. My father hesitated:
“If we leave like this, without warm clothes… Just a moment…”
That moment cost him his life. The punitive troops met him in the yard and shot him.
We waited behind the house. A neighbor ran past us yelling:
“Why are you standing here? Run! They’re shooting everyone!”
Mother ran toward the house shouting,
“Your father!”
Gunfire answered her. I grabbed her by the sleeve and pulled her back.
The village—turned into a bonfire—was choked with smoke. All we could see were shadowy figures darting through the haze; screams, moans, the cries of animals—some wounded, some burning alive. It felt as if the village itself, a living creature, was writhing and groaning in agony…
People were running nearby. Others fell.
The horror, the impossibility of what was happening—left no room for thought. My legs just moved on their own, as if only reaching the woods would end it, like waking from a nightmare…
When we reached the forest, we heard a child crying. From behind the bushes appeared my sister-in-law with the children. The little ones were barefoot in the snow.
We headed toward the village of Semyonovskoye, but Semyonovskoye was burning too. Like hunted animals, we ran in circles through the trees on a tiny patch of forest.
We made for Karpani. The Germans had already been there as well, but most of the villagers had escaped into the woods. A girl from Semyonovskoye had warned them—she’d jumped from a window during the massacre, wearing only a dress.
A little later, while the fires were still smoldering, the fascists lifted the guard from the destroyed village. A handful of survivors made their way back to the ashes.”6
According to village elders, “The village of Selyane was burned by Finns.”7
The Germans often carried out punitive actions with the help of local police auxiliaries and various national battalions 8 under SS officers. Other sources confirm this pattern:
“Many believe that most of them were blondish-haired Finns and Romanians.”910
Finnish punitive detachments left traces in other regions as well:
“Looting and violence against the population in areas occupied by the Germans are steadily increasing. The worst excesses are committed by punitive units composed chiefly of Finns,”
—report of the Oryol NKVD Department. 11
Residents of Velikiye Luki likewise recalled:
“Certain Finnish units were even more terrifying than the Germans.”12
Officially, the Finnish authorities deny any such participation, yet there is ample testimony and declassified FSB documents to the contrary.13
On that single day in Selyane, 120 people were killed.
They spared no one—neither pregnant women, nor the elderly, nor children…
One old man managed to survive despite a bullet that passed through his throat; he fell in the hallway and heard the punishers shoot his family—his wife, his daughter, and a neighbor girl who had run in…
After the troops left, he gathered his strength and dragged the bodies of his wife, daughter, and the neighbor child out of the burning house.
A group of children was led to a trench behind the houses; the punishers threw in a grenade, but one little girl lived…
In another family the children were home alone—four of them. When the troops began shooting, a boy of about seven leapt into the oven and crouched there in the heat until the punishers departed—and thus he survived.14
The depopulation program in other villages:
In Stramousovo twenty-five families perished: people were shot right in their homes. In nearby Suvidovo the residents of all fourteen houses were herded into a shed and burned alive. Altogether, sixty-nine people were killed in these two villages…
On the morning of October 20 the punitive detachment reached Shchibrovo…
All the inhabitants were driven from their houses—supposedly for a “meeting”—and the men were separated from the women. All eight men, including the elderly, were executed, and the village was completely burned…
In Zharki the punishers likewise shot all the men—eleven in all—and set the houses alight… Statement of two juvenile witnesses, recorded 1942, Tver Regional Archive.
By evening the SS appeared in Kokorevo.”
There, too, eleven men were killed and twenty-two houses burned. While the executions were taking place, the women and children managed to escape from a locked barn.15
Morning of 21 October: the Destruction of Ovinishche:
Twelve boys, twenty-seven children aged four and older, women with infants… The executioners beheaded Galina Dmitrievna Yakovleva… The village was literally wiped off the face of the earth. Seventy-six people died.16
Only three women survived. Two boys had slipped into the forest the previous evening:
“They heard gunfire and screams, saw the village burning. When all fell silent and they returned, the scene was horrific. A girl, bearing signs of abuse, hung from a fence. Bodies of the executed lay amid the ashes…”17
The detachment then burned the village of Zaboritsa, killing eight people.
In Lavrovo the SS shot fourteen adult men and nineteen boys, as well as two women…
In Novo-Ivanovskoye… nine boys and one man…
In Koshkino… eleven people…
In Vasilyevo… ten men…
In Proshkovo… nine men…18
After gathering their bloody harvest, the punishers moved on to the next district.19
So much for the “Mercedes cars and Bavarian beer” promised under the “new order.” People woke each morning not knowing whether they would live out the day—or what fresh horrors awaited them.
January 18, 1942: The Massacre in Kudino:
The fascist punishers burst into Kudino, driving people from their homes. Residents of Zarechye20 were herded there as well.
Everyone was gathered at the school…
Darya was tending her two little sons—one still an infant—when the punishers ordered everyone to the school. She tried to explain that it was bitterly cold and begged to fetch warm clothes. A lanky fascist sneered, ‘No need to dress—soon you’ll all be warm!’
Driven on by the escort, Darya hurried along the street. It was Epiphany frost, yet she felt no cold—only shielding her breasts so as not to lose her milk.
Several houses in the village were already ablaze. Fear mounted within her. Then, far ahead, she saw her own home swallowed in smoke and flames—and knew her children were inside.
Darya collapsed in the snow. A punisher kicked her in the stomach with his boot, but she did not stir…
“I came to myself from the warmth,” the elderly Darya Seliverstovna later recounted through tears. “I woke—and immediately thought of my children. They told me, ‘The children are here.’ Villagers had dragged me out and saved my sons from the fire. But my husband—along with the others—was at the school…”
All who stood against the school wall were mown down by machine-gun fire before their neighbors’ eyes. Then fuel was poured over the walls, over the bodies, and set alight.
The school burned; those who moments before had been alive burned; eleven homesteads in Kudino burned. The punishers let no one leave, and the villagers watched in mute horror.
Yet one of the fallen, already in flames, stirred and pushed himself up. People in front gasped: “Ivan!”
Ivan Lavrentyev was still alive. With a groan he turned to the woman nearest him: “Aunt Nastya… oh, it’s so hot… pull me away…”
She took a few steps toward him, but the Germans rushed at her and shoved her back among the terrified villagers. One punisher approached Ivan and shot him in the head.”21
That day, as the detachment surrounded Kudino, several women seized their children and fled. Yelena Sergeyevna Kalugina with her five-year-old Dima, and Maria Sergeyevna Yumina with two-year-old Alyosha and nine-year-old Seryozha, half-clothed, ran through the forest in forty-degree frost to the village of Tsikorevo.
The women watched in anguish the glow swirling above their native village. Machine-gun bursts echoed like pain in their hearts…
Fearing that the fascists would strike Tsikorevo next, almost all the women and children slipped across the frozen lake at nightfall to Shalai.22
There, in the village of Shalai, Anna Mikheeva gave them shelter:
“If those devils come here too—then we’re all done for. Come into my house!”
The children, soothed by warmth, quickly fell asleep.
But the mothers could not sleep. They were anxious—what if the punishers came to Shalai? The women lay beside their children, straining to catch every sound in the anxious silence of that bitterly cold January night.
It was well past midnight when they heard cautious footsteps outside the house.
“Germans!” one woman whispered with a groan.
“We were frozen in fear—not so much for ourselves as for the children,” recalls Yelena Sergeyevna Kalugina.
One of the women ran to the window. The frozen pane revealed nothing, but every sound was clear.
And when, outside in the frost-bitten night heavy with fear, she heard Russian speech, she cried out, her voice breaking into tears:
“Ours! Our dear ones have come!”23
The vanguard units of the 4th Shock Army were entering the village.
Victory Day cannot be separated from the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow. If you efer travel the roads of our vast country, take a moment to stop at the memorials—dedicated to those who perished as martyrs, and those who fell defending and liberating their Motherland.
