Real genocide

Stalag-342: all for the extermination of people

This is how the Nazis and their henchmen created hell on Belarusian land

The project of the Belarus Segodnya Publishing House with the support of the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Republic of Belarus

This fall, SB. Belarus Segodnya newspaper already touched upon the history of the Stalags that arose on the occupied Belarusian land — Wehrmacht camps for prisoners of war from the rank and file — (‘Stalags of Belarus’, April 12th, 2022). Nevertheless, it became clear that this topic should be returned to after the appeal to the editorial office of the daughter of the man who told the country and the world about Molodechno, one of the toughest camps. After all, it is the details that show all the inhumanity of both the creators of the man-made hell on Belarusian land, and the attempts of their direct and ideological descendants to forget that terrible past and ‘dignify’ their history.

Death at the site of the seminary

In the first days of the occupation, the Nazis established their camp on the territory of the former Molodechno Teachers’ Seminary. At first, it was transit, but soon became stationary and received the name Stalag-342. Prisoners of war and civilians suspected of having links with partisans were sent here.

Stalag-342 was located in the northeastern part of the city, 500 metres from Zamkovaya Street. One of its German guards, P. Körner-Schrader, noted in his later book called Diary of a German Soldier (Field Post Office No. 01621), “The camp was located... in the buildings of some factory. In the factory yard... there is a small building. From there, the entire camp is visible at a glance. Prisoners lie In the pits, covered with leaves and straw, in the morning the prisoners are driven out to work — to dismantle log pillboxes and destroyed houses...”

The lives of 33,150 Soviet prisoners of war from Belarus and Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, residents of Leningrad and Moscow, Novosibirsk and Kuibyshev, Odessa and Kyiv died here...

Testimony of the camp policeman

The State Archive of the Russian Federation (fund 7021, inventory 89, file 9) contains the handwriting called Molodechno Prisoner of War Camp (07/01/1941 - 10/02/1943), written by the former head of the prisoner-of-war camp police Pyotr Krasnoperkin. Here are some fragments of it, eloquently showing the situation of the prisoners of Stalag-342.
“On July 1st, 1941, there were already several thousand prisoners of war and about the same number of civilians in the camp. The civilian population of both sexes and a wide variety of ages. There were also very old people, and very young (14-15-year-old teenagers).”
“Prisoners of war arrived almost daily, and all the barracks-stables in the camp were overcrowded by the end of July. They slept on the floor, in attics, arranged hanging ‘beds’. At night, one had to walk right over the human bodies lying solid in order to take care of one’s needs. The number of prisoners of war reached 30,000 people.”

“The camp was like a nightmare. There wasn’t enough water. People, emaciated to the limit, resembled skeletons, and the camp itself was a huge cemetery, on which all those buried at once rose up. They suffered terribly from hunger and heat. Weakness from hunger made people like shadows. They went crazy from hunger, killed themselves. Hunger was the king of the camp, but the Germans were the ones who gave him the crown.”

“In August, the first deaths from starvation appeared... But the nightmare had not yet reached its climax at that time. This happened in October and November. Precisely — early winter came with the first severe frosts. The barracks where the prisoners were located were not heated. There was no bath. In November, typhus broke out and the camp was quarantined. Bread was given with sawdust. People ate their restricted limit of 100 grams and died, writhing in terrible pain. Frozen during the day and during sleep at night. Mortality has reached the highest levels: 350-400 people per day.”

“The Germans took no action. The ration did not increase, the barracks were not heated, the sick were not treated (Russian doctors in prison provided little assistance to the sick). It was clear to everyone that all these conditions were created on purpose, specifically for the extermination of people.”

Lest we forget

Having gained independence in 1991, Belarus was in no hurry to perpetuate the memory of the prisoners of the Nazi genocide. Only with the election of the first President did the situation move forward. The Stalag-342 Memorial Complex — a stylised barrack-box made of concrete without a single window — was created in 1995. Earlier, employees of the State Archives of Minsk Region discovered a scheme of burials on the territory of this camp, it marked the places of 220 graves, in each of which more than 150 people were buried. On July 5th, 1995, a special commission, created by decision of the presidential administration, unanimously assigned Stalag-342 the status of concentration on the basis of the collected documents and evidence.

The project of the monument was developed by the architect Leonid Levin, the creator of Khatyn Memorial Complex. The idea of its creation, as well as painstaking work to identify the victims of the Molodechno camp, belongs to the former front-line soldier and history teacher, honorary citizen of Molodechno Alexander Mazanik, who left us in 2006. He worked as the director of evening school No. 2, for more than a quarter of a century he headed the freelance department of the city committee of people’s control, in retirement he was elected executive secretary of the Belarusian Voluntary Society for the Protection of Monuments of History and Culture. He restored churches and chapels, compiled a set of monuments, his daughter, a volunteer of the regional organisation of the Belarusian Red Cross Svetlana Parkalova told SB, 

“Nonetheless, the Stalag-342 Memorial Complex is his main brainchild. How many searches, correspondences, work in the archives were analysed, how many he went from office to office and just lost his energy! My father even went to see the President in order to give the Stalag the status of a concentration camp. So, when the memorial complex was opened in 1995, he said that he was very happy, because he had fulfilled his duty to the dead.”

These documents, as well as other materials and personal photographs of Alexander Mazanik, were handed over by his daughter to the Minsk Regional Local Lore Museum. After all, the country and new generations of Belarusians should know their history. In order not to repeat this on their land. By the way, Stalag-342 operated until July 5th, 1944 — until Molodechno was liberated from Nazi invaders.

Plans of a ‘civilised Europe’
According to the survey map of the German colonisation of the Baltic States and Belarus, the German authorities were going to ‘clear’ these territories for the resettlement of German colonists on them. The document specified specifically by city, how many German colonists should be settled in them and how many local residents should be left (for use as slaves). It was planned to settle 7,000 Germans in Molodechno and its region, leave 15,000 locals as labour force, and destroy the rest. That’s what Stalag-342 was created for.

Stalag-342 schedule (before quarantine):
1. Getting up 6:00.
2. Getting food (100 grams of bread and 1 litre of soup).
3. Work until the evening.
4. Return from work. Without getting food.

By Maksim Osipov
Open source photos