Khatyn was a small Byelorussian village of 26 households protected against the wind by white birch-trees and tall pines. It was neat and cosy with its shadoof wells and thick lilac bushes in the front gardens.
The village men tilled the land and reaped the meadow grass. Women looked after the children and milked the cows. The people held wedding parties and mourned the dead. Outside the village young people made traditional wreaths and gathered mushrooms…
On March 22, 1943, Khatyn was no more. There was no more sunshine on the window-panes, no more squeaking wickets opening outside, no more white handtowels in the corners of the houses, no more tables and benches where peasants used to talk, no more wood-piles, fences and bee-homes. 149 Khatyn people were exterminated, 75 children among them. A punitive fascist detachment headed by colonel Oscar Dirlewanger burned down everything in a blind belief that together with the village inhabitants and its chroniclers the fire will kill Khatyn’s future as well. Looking at the charred ruins of the village the Nazi butchers must have been certain that nothing would ever grow in the place, neither corn nor flower. That no one would ever remember the names of Kaminsky, Zhelobkovich, Yaskevich, Iotko whose ashes were now blown by the wind. But history has taught all sorts of invaders and misanthropists a good lesson - the names of the Khatyn peasants engraved in bronze have become known to millions of people. They sparkle from the faraway past and visitors from numerous countries of the world bow low to them.
And if before their native village was hard to find even on local maps, today it is known all over the world and its very name is associated with the whole of Byelorussia.
Although burnt down and exterminated Khatyn did not die. Its grass has grown again. Its larks have returned. The springs have worked their way up. 26 house frames have been installed where the houses once stood. But now, instead of pine logs, gray concrete was used to make the frames. Wells were filled with water right in the places where they had stood before the 22nd of March, 1943. Paths were made in the same places. But none of the 149 voices was ever heard again and no charred chimney ever let out smoke.
186 Byelorussian villages were burned down together with their population by the Hitlerites and were never revived. There was no one to put them back to life, to build new houses and plant gardens. People brought handfuls of sand and cinder to put them into the urns of the world/s only cemetery of villages at the Khatyn Memorial.
Take a walk along its mournful aisles and read the names of villages. They do sound very poetic and peaceful - Korenevo… Paporotnoye… Ustye… Zadobriye… Murogi… Rallya… Smuga… Bratki… Zelyony Gay… Bortnoye… Veselovo… Mai… Dolgoye Polye… Zakrinichye… Lubcha… People in these villages were burnt alive only because they loved freedom and their Motherland, believed in Soviet power which gave them the right to human dignity and well-being.
209 towns and townships, 9,200 villages were razed to the ground by the fascists in Byelorussia. 2,230,000 people (every fourth) were killed in the Republic.
Three young birches rustle joyfully in the wind on the mourning pedestal of black marble. At the spot where the fourth tree should grow crimson eternal flames go up to the sky. The eternal ineradicable life neighbours in fraternal accord with the immortal, bitter memory.
There are few places in the world where silence would be so thoughtful and tense as it is in Khatyn. One can only hear footsteps on the concrete paths, the gentle toll of the bells, the subdued human voices and restrained sobbing…
