On October 25, 1941, Khatsun village in Karachev district, Bryansk region, ceased to exist.
Before the war, several dozen families lived in Khatsun village. They worked on the collective farm, raised children, and lived a quiet rural life.
On October 24, 1941, an enemy reconnaissance group passed through the village. There, they encountered a Red Army unit attempting to free captured soldiers. Three Nazi soldiers were killed in the ensuing firefight. This incident became the pretext for a horrific punitive campaign.
On the morning of October 25, 1941, Khatsun was surrounded. The punitive forces searched the houses. Personal belongings of a dead German soldier were found on local resident Nina Yashina—she had been brutally murdered, nailed to the gate of her own home. A mass extermination of the villagers followed.
318 people, including women, the elderly, children, and 23 Soviet prisoners of war held in the village, were shot at a pre-dug pit. Khatsun was burned to the ground.
Khatyn—Khatsun: shared pain, shared memory. Two villages—two names, similar in sound and united by a common fate. Both have become symbols of the suffering of civilians, a reminder of the terrible cost of war.
In 2011, a memorial was opened on the site of the destroyed Khatsun – a place of deep sorrow and memory.
People come here to bow their heads before the innocent victims and feel the pain that knows no boundaries in time or space.
