Khatyn massacre

Khatyn or Chatyń (Belarusian and Russian: Хаты́нь, pronounced [xɐˈtɨnʲ]) was a village of 26 houses and 156 inhabitants in Belarus, in Lahoysk Raion, Minsk Region, 50 km away from Minsk. On 22 March 1943, the entire population of the village was massacred by the Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118 of Ukrainische Hilfspolizei. The battalion was formed in July 1942 in Kiev and was made up mostly of Ukrainian nationalist collaborators from Western Ukraine and Hiwis, assisted by the Dirlewanger Waffen-SS special battalion.

The massacre was not an unusual incident in modern-day Belarus during World War II. At least 5,295 Belarusian settlements were burned and destroyed by the Nazis, and often all their inhabitants were killed (some amounting up to 1,500 victims) as a punishment for collaboration with partisans. In the Vitebsk region, 243 villages were burned down twice, 83 villages three times, and 22 villages were burned down four or more times. In the Minsk region, 92 villages were burned down twice, 40 villages three times, nine villages four times, and six villages five or more times. Altogether, over 2,000,000 people were killed in Belarus during the three years of Nazi occupation, almost a quarter of the region's population.

On 22 March 1943, a German convoy was attacked by Soviet partisans near Koziri village just 6 km away from Khatyn, resulting in the deaths of four police officers of Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118, which consisted mostly of Ukrainian collaborators, and Red Army prisoner-of-war volunteers and deserters. Among the dead was Hauptmann Hans Woellke, the battalion's commanding officer. Woellke was an Olympic champion in Berlin in 1936 and an acquaintance of Adolf Hitler.

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