Posted:
27.03.2025 14:54:25
Head of Ozarichi Memorial Complex Zinaida Khlebovets: ‘Concentration camp is golgotha of Polesie. Humanity must not forget this tragedy.’
Trostenets, Ozarichi, the Minsk Ghetto, Koldychevo, Krasny Bereg… These and hundreds of other places are inscribed in the hearts of concentration camp prisoners in blood. During the investigation of the criminal case on genocide on Belarus’ territory, the Prosecutor General’s Office established 578 death camps (90 of which were previously unknown) and sites of mass extermination of Soviet citizens, where almost 1.5 million people perished during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Ozarichi was called the Wehrmacht’s living shield for a reason. Under the guise of evacuation, German fascists drove more than 50,000 civilians onto a swamp, enclosing it with barbed wire. It was here that the Nazis first used bacteriological weapons, infecting the prisoners with typhus. From March 10th to 19th, 1944, those were 10 days of sheer hell. Zinaida Khlebovets is the head of the Ozarichi Memorial Complex, co-author of the book Ozarichi — Road to Death, a history teacher with 40 years of experience, winner of the Woman of the Year – 2022 regional competition in the category We Take Pride and Remember and the Person of the Year – 2024 competition in the Vocation category. For 28 years, she has been studying the history of the concentration camp, making a huge contribution to the military patriotic education of young people.
Zinaida Khlebovets — You were born after the war. Where does this genetic pull towards everything related to it come from?
— My small motherland is the village of Barkolabovo in Bykhov District of Mogilev Region. I grew up in a large, hard-working family. The pain and suffering my parents had endured during the Great Patriotic War was passed on to me.
May 9th is our family’s main holiday. On this day, my father, a front-line soldier, heavily wounded near Königsberg, would hang a Soviet flag on the house, put on his best suit and his medals — and together we would all go to the rally. Afterwards, our large table would be filled with relatives, friends, neighbours, all those who had returned alive. We remembered the dead, sang war songs, and raised toasts to the Victory and to the hope that our children and grandchildren would never know what war is like. This tradition continues to this day.
At the museum
— At the beginning of 1944, the front line in Belarus ran along the Dnieper and Berezina rivers. The Red Army was advancing, and the 150,000-strong German force was retreating. On January 14th, 1944, Kalinkovichi and Mozyr were liberated. At the cost of incredible effort, Ozarichi was liberated on January 20th. The swampy terrain did not allow the Germans to dig in and create reliable defensive structures. It was impossible to contain the Red Army’s offensive in such conditions. It was then that the commander of the tank corps, Lieutenant General Friedrich Hossbach, former adjutant to Adolf Hitler, whose infantry divisions held the line of defence in this area, had a ‘brilliant’ idea: to drive the incapacitated population into the swamp, as they put it, ‘useless mouths who had become a burden to the German army’ — the elderly, women and children.
— Ozarichi is the only camp in Belarus that was created by the Wehrmacht.
— Yes, and it is the first instance during the Great Patriotic War where the top echelons of Nazi Germany had a hand in creating a death camp. Furthermore, it was the only concentration camp where bacteriological weapons were used.
German microbiologist Blumenthal wrote to Hitler that it would not be the plague or some other disease that would be used here, but typhus fever. In the swampy terrain, without water, food or medical assistance, the contagion would spread very quickly. It was also planned that, by saving the prisoners, units of the 65th Army of General Pavel Batov would become infected with typhus. In this way, the disease was supposed to transfer to our soldiers.
— What was the camp like?
— It was a complex of camps, created in the spring of 1944 near Ozarichi, not far from the settlement of Dert and the village of Podosinnik. No barracks or bunks — just icy ground, snow, swamp, watchtowers with machine gunners, barbed wire and mines around the perimeter. Filth, as it thawed, flowed into the swampy lowlands. The prisoners, tormented by thirst, dug holes and drank this contaminated water.
Children, women and old men died from the cold, disease and hunger. For sadistic pleasure, the Germans set dogs on them, shot at them, threw hand grenades. They did not allow burying the dead either. In the first days, the dead were piled up in one place. When the prisoners no longer had the strength, lifeless bodies were left to lie everywhere.
This photo from Ozarichi seems to be known all over the world. It shows a five-year-old girl
who was photographed in the concentration
camp in 1944. For many years, no one knew
anything about her subsequent fate, until
Vera Solonovich’s nephew saw the photo
in museum of the Great Patriotic War. Vera
Solonovich (née Kuryan) lived to be 85 years
old. She died in 2024.
— On March 17th–18th, Soviet intelligence discovered the camp.
— On March 19th, Red Army soldiers liberated 33,480 prisoners. More than 20,000 people did not survive the torment. Military doctors of the 1st Byelorussian Front and the sanitary service of the 65th Army brought thousands of weakened prisoners back to life. Officially, the Ozarichi death camp existed for ten days, but some researchers believe that people began to be driven here several weeks (or even months) earlier.
— People not only died in the death camp, they were also born…
— There were a lot of pregnant women. They gave birth, died themselves, and their babies perished. On March 16th, 1944, a boy was born who was destined to survive in this hell. His mother died immediately. People took off her padded jacket, wrapped the crying boy in it and laid him on a hummock under a pine tree. Newly arrived shared everything they could: a piece of sugar, a gnawed crust of bread… Valentin Tatarinov survived. He is the only one whose place of birth is recorded as the Ozarichi concentration camp, Domanovichi District, Polesie Region.
— Last January you took over as head of the Ozarichi Memorial Complex. Yet, the history of the memorial had begun long before that.
— Vladimir Makatrov, a history teacher, local historian and headteacher of the Ozarichi secondary school, learned about the Ozarichi concentration camp from local residents in the first half of the 1950s and began collecting material about the fascist atrocities. His article about the camp stirred the whole country. The first monument to the victims of the Ozarichi death camps was officially opened on the 10th anniversary of the liberation — March 19th, 1954.
In 1965, a memorial complex was erected, which was rebuilt in 1991-1992. Three stelae serve as a reminder of the three concentration camps, known as the Ozarichi death camp.
The first step towards a major reconstruction of the complex was due to the attention of President Aleksandr Lukashenko: he pointed out the importance of preserving historical memory and the truth about the war, as well as the relevance of patriotic education. The Prosecutor General’s Office, for its part, initiated a criminal case of genocide against the Belarusian people.
Following the latest large-scale reconstruction, the memorial was solemnly opened on December 9th, 2023 — World Genocide Commemoration Day. The Ozarichi concentration camp is the golgotha of Polesie. Humanity must not forget this tragedy. Without memory of the past, there can be no future.
Ozarichi Memorial Complex — Only through memory! No country in the world has been subjected to such genocide as ours. Every day of the more than three-year occupation of Belarus was one of violence, torture, murder, and executions... More than 12,000 settlements were burned completely or partially. Now, more than ever, it is important to unite in order to protect our historical truth.
Followers of the Nazi ideology in ‘civilised’ Europe have begun to revise the causes and course of the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Union’s contribution to the victory over fascism, to desecrate the graves of Soviet soldiers, and to destroy monuments to the victorious warriors.
One can appeal for peace fervently and convincingly. Yet nothing is more convincing than a concrete contribution to the preservation of memory and the real truth about the war.
Anyone who is convinced that fascism ‘brought civilisation to our land’, who glorifies murderers, who worships the white-red-white (BChB) flags under which the genocide of the Belarusian people was carried out, I invite you to Ozarichi. We will show you what genocide is, and we will prove that those who are trying to lecture us today, at the very least, have no right to do so.
— Europe is demolishing monuments, while we are reviving them and creating new ones. What for?
— So that something like this never happens again. How can one disagree with General Batov, who liberated the Ozarichi concentration camp: ‘The memory of war lives not only in bronze and stone monuments, but above all in human hearts’?
— What would you wish Belarusians on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory?
— That no one ever sees in reality what I talk about at the memorial, what makes the heart clench. I want every Belarusian to feel pride in our Blue-Eyed country [Belarus’ nickname] and, if necessary, be ready to stand up for its defence, as the generation of victors did — so that our children and grandchildren leave our beloved Belarus as beautiful, independent and sovereign to their children and grandchildren.
By Natalia Tyshkevich
