Deputy Prosecutor General: Belarus was subjected to all forms of genocide specified by UN Convention

The mass destruction of people became common from the first days of the occupation – as stated by the Deputy Prosecutor General of Belarus, Aleksei Stuk, at the recently held plenary session of the State Policy in the Field of History: Problems and Prospects of Preserving Historical Truth and Memory republican scientific and practical conference

The investigation of the criminal case on the genocide of the Belarusian people during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war period, which began in April 2021, continues in Belarus. Every day, prosecutors, investigators, experts, representatives of the Defence Ministry, historians and archivists establish new facts of crimes of Nazi criminals and their accomplices.

“Belarus was subjected to all forms of genocide specified by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Third Reich leaders declared that one of the goals of the war against the Soviet Union was to cut the Slavic population by 30 million," Mr. Stuk recalled. “The policy of Hitler's Germany towards Soviet citizens differed significantly from the behaviour in other European countries, where the civility was initially met. At the same time, the Soviet citizens were immediately declared sub-humans, towards whom any punitive measures could be applied.”

The mass destruction of people became common since the first days of the occupation. “In July 1941, Heinrich Himmler held a meeting in Baranovichi, at which it was decided to conduct a large-scale operation ‘to cleanse’ the Brest Region of the so-called hostile elements,” the Deputy Prosecutor General stressed. “Executions and gallows, gas chambers and burning, starvation and the spread of diseases were used. That was supposed to create fear, to suppress attempts to resist the occupation regime.”

More than 500 death camps were organised on the territory of Belarus.