Khatyn Memorial
It was cold and it was dark. He felt an unbelievable pain gripping his entire body and at first Joseph could not recall how he got there and what had happened. Then the whole ghastly event came flooding back to him. The 22nd March 1943 the Nazis arrived in the village of Khatyn, rounding up all its inhabitants and herding them like cattle into the barn. With the roof covered in straw and the doors barred, the barn was doused in petrol and set alight. Joseph could both see and hear his friends and family die in the flames, burnt alive. And now, all that was left of his village was him, and the ashes. Joseph went looking for his son, and cradled his badly burnt, but still breathing, body in his arms, where he later died.
26 households were razed to the ground and 149 people died that day at Khatyn. Joseph Kaminsky, the blacksmith, was the only one to survive. Khatyn was one of 186 villages in Belarus to suffer a similar fate during WWII and forever be wiped off the face of the earth. A further 433 villages were also totally destroyed, but were later rebuilt after the war. 2,230,000 people perished in total, one in four of the population.
Not many memorials have moved me in the way Khatyn did. The only sounds were the ringing of the 26 bells – each one erected where a home once stood – at 30 second intervals, and the surreal clatter of a distant woodpecker. The eerie silence, the fitting hail storm and the ghostlike emptiness came together to overwhelm me totally.
Khatyn Memorial
It was cold and it was dark. He felt an unbelievable pain gripping his entire body and at first Joseph could not recall how he got there and what had happened. Then the whole ghastly event came flooding back to him. The 22nd March 1943 the Nazis arrived in the village of Khatyn, rounding up all its inhabitants and herding them like cattle into the barn. With the roof covered in straw and the doors barred, the barn was doused in petrol and set alight. Joseph could both see and hear his friends and family die in the flames, burnt alive. And now, all that was left of his village was him, and the ashes. Joseph went looking for his son, and cradled his badly burnt, but still breathing, body in his arms, where he later died.
26 households were razed to the ground and 149 people died that day at Khatyn. Joseph Kaminsky, the blacksmith, was the only one to survive. Khatyn was one of 186 villages in Belarus to suffer a similar fate during WWII and forever be wiped off the face of the earth. A further 433 villages were also totally destroyed, but were later rebuilt after the war. 2,230,000 people perished in total, one in four of the population.
Not many memorials have moved me in the way Khatyn did. The only sounds were the ringing of the 26 bells – each one erected where a home once stood – at 30 second intervals, and the surreal clatter of a distant woodpecker. The eerie silence, the fitting hail storm and the ghostlike emptiness came together to overwhelm me totally.