Tragedy in Borki: More than 2,000 people exterminated by Nazis on June 15, 1942

A week before the 81st anniversary of the Great Patriotic War, on June 14-15, a large-scale conference "Historical Memory: The Great Victory won through unity" will be held in Minsk under the auspices of the House of Representatives. Parliamentarians, public and scientists from several countries, rallying like their fathers and grandfathers in the 40s, defending the common motherland, will jointly defend the historical truth. After all, in the world today faces a total process of falsification of the outcome of World War II and the Great Patriotic War. History is actually being recreated, parades in honor of veterans of the SS are being organized, streets are named after Nazis. 

Belarus, which lost in that war one third of its population and more than ten thousand destroyed settlements, cannot look indifferently at it. Our duty is to defend the truth in memory of those who did not live till May 1945, those who returned from the front as invalids and those who were burnt alive by the Nazis. 

80 years ago, on June 15, 1942 more than two thousand people were exterminated in the village of Borki.

Borki is one of thousands of Belarusian villages, where the houses are surrounded by a lake, and behind the huts there are hectares of fields and forests. A small village, at the entrance of which there is a large-scale memorial. It commemorates the tragedy that took place here 80 years ago, June 15, 1942. In a few hours, the Nazis exterminated 2,027 people. That's 13 Khatyn villages.

The reason for the massacre of the civilians were partisan ambushes. After all, the region was one of the centers of the guerrilla movement in Belarus. 

Alexander Pavlyukovich, local historian:

“On June 7, 1942, partisans from the combined group of the 277th partisan detachment made an ambush on the highway Bobruisk - Mogilev. German pilots, who were going from Bobruisk to Mogilev, were ambushed. Forty-two pilots were killed. On June 9, two days later, near the village of Borki, there was another ambush. 

A special SS unit under the command of Oskar Paul Dirlewanger was responsible for guarding the road on which the ambush had been set up. The Nazis could not forgive the deaths of almost 70 people. They took revenge on children, women and the elderly. Dirlewanger and his team arrived in Mogilev three months before the tragedy in Borki, in March 1942. 

The new order in Borki was established by the Nazi administration immediately after the occupation. The headman and the police appeared in the village. Also a special punitive unit operated in the area. Its task was to destroy the military, communists, party workers and Jews. 

The tragedy of the village of Borki began in September 1941, only three months after the occupation. About 40 people were brought to the school yard, checked against the list, and then led under guard together with the Nazi occupants to the village of Chechevichi (where the German garrison was located) and shot. The place of the execution is still unknown.

The village was surrounded at dawn. The punishers entered the houses, shot sleepy children, nursing mothers, and bedridden old people. Then the so-called torchbearers set fire to the house.  

The school building became the common grave for the fellow villagers. And the fateful Monday of June 15, 1942 became the common date of death.