Many years have passed since the Great Patriotic War, but the memory of this tragic page in history is still alive today. One of the evidences of those events is Khatyn.
Khatyn
This is a memorial complex that has become a symbol of courage and defiance of the heroic people of Belarus, who have suffered innumerable sacrifices in the name of life and victory. The complex is located near the city of Logoisk.
On the morning of March 22, 1943, six kilometers from the village of Khatyn, Soviet partisans fired at a Nazi convoy. As a result, a German officer was killed - SS Hauptsturmführer Hans Welke, Hitler's favorite. Fascists thirsty for revenge broke into Khatyn. The entire population of the village was driven out of their homes and locked up in a collective farm shed. They did not spare anyone - neither the elderly, nor women, nor the sick, nor children. An entire village was killed by the Nazis - 149 people were burned alive.
In 1969, on the site of a village burned down together with the people, a memorial complex was opened in memory of all the perished inhabitants of Belarus.
There is a small museum in front of the entrance, just a few small halls. Be sure to visit it, read the documents, look at the photos. Walking through the exposition, you "plunge into the past and see the war with your own eyes."
The first thing that you will see when you come to the memorial complex will be the six-meter sculpture “The Unconquered Man”. She depicts Joseph Kaminsky, the only survivor of that terrible tragedy. He managed to survive only by a miracle - wounded and burned, he regained consciousness late at night when the punishers left the burned village. In his arms he holds one of his four dead children.
This place is compared to a book, since each part of the complex is a separate page from the history of the Great Patriotic War:
"The Cemetery of the Villages" is dedicated to settlements destroyed by the Nazis and never raised from the ashes.
“Trees of Life” are symbols of villages that were rebuilt in peacetime.
The Wall of Remembrance is a memorial to those who were tortured in concentration camps and ghettos.
26 obelisks in the form of chimneys with bells symbolize the burnt houses of Khatyn.
