Soviet Extraordinary Commission Inquiry into War Crimes in Vasilishki

Copies of the original Soviet documents were obtained from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. The call number is RG-22.002M. The records for Vasilishki are item 7021-86-36, on reel 13. Because of copyright considerations, we cannot post Aleksander Solts' full translation of the narrative portions of the inquiry, and are instead listing the atrocities reported. The copies we received of these portions of the document were very faint, and it's amazing that Aleksander Solts was able to decipher nearly all of it.

late September 1941?: 48 Soviet prisoners of war are shot next to the tower 2 km from village Lichkovtsy of Ber... vsky selsoviet. Their names are unknown.

November 1941: German units escorting a column of Soviet prisoners execute 18 of them near Green Hill, a place on the road Sinyatevka and Kripichovshchina of Ostrino selsoviet.

May 10-11, 1942: men are moved from the ghetto, which had been surrounded by German troops for a couple of days, in groups of about 60 men to the cemetery, near the outskirts of the village. Here, mass graves have already been prepared, the men are forced to undress, pushed into them and shot. The shooting continued until the evening of the second day. 2159 deaths in all. The perpetrators were SS Troops ("Sondertruppen") brought in from Lida under Stabs-Leiter Windisch and his deputy Vasniukovich, Gendarmie and Gestapo from the area, as well as local police led by Commandant Yezhevski, deputies Tubelevich and Shmigira, whose cruelty was particularly outstanding

October 1942: 8 citizens of Sobakinski selsoviet are burned alive in the village of Khodileni, Shestakovski selsoviet by members of the Gestapo.

April 4, 1943: German troops surround Ogorodishche village of Kotylski selsoviet: and drive the residents to one place. Some of the men are forced to dig pits. Groups of about 10 men at a time are shot into the pits. 148 residents of the village are murdered. The village is burned. (The number of houses involved is illegible in our copy).
April 22, 1944: About 800 German troops surround ZINYAKI, Naroshanski selsoviet, gather the citizens in 2 groups - men in one, women & children in the other. They shoot the children with their parents looking on. Then the men are driven into one threshing barn, the women into another, the buildings doused with gasoline and set on fire. Children who'd tried to hide but were found were thrown into the fire alive. Rifles and machine guns are fired into the flames. There were 484 victims. The village, which had 82 houses, was burned down. Participants include: Gendarmie from garrisons in the villages of Ostrino, Sobakintsy, Novyj-Dvor, Ozery and Beryaty

It was possible to compile a list of 1498 men nurdered in the area. A total of 2855 men were shot, hanged or tortured. 598 were set to forced labor.

The committee compiling these data consisted of:
Chairman of the Commission - MELNIKOV FYODOR YAKOLYEVICH -secretary of district's Party Committee;
secretary of Commission - UTIN VIKTOR IVANOVICH, secretary of district's Executive Committee
and members of the Commission - DVOYNIAKOV TRO(FIM?)..., chief ....,
GORODEYCHIK BORIS IVANOVICH, deputy of secretary of district's Executive Committee,
SAVELYEVA MARIYA IVANOVNA, acting director of district's health department,
BUBNOV IVAN GRIGORYEVICH, director of district's educational department,
CHEKHOVSKOI IVAN NIKOLAYEVICH - technician of district's municipal services

A short testimony by Galina Vasil'yevna Kuzmich, born 1917, a telephone operator, as to the event of April 22, 1994 in ZINYAKI is included. She added the detail that bodies were piled into the threshing barns in layers, covered with straw, then more bodies piled, unitl the barens were full, then set on fire. She also said that the Zinyaki village warden Nikolai Zhurup collaborated actively with the Germans and left with them after his village was burnt.

List of criminals responsible for the atrocities | List of victims

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