In the chronicle of Hitler's terror in the occupied territories, as the symbols of mass extermination of civilians was recorded - Belarusian Hatyn’ with 149 killed, Czech Lidice with 320 victims, French Oradour-sur-Glane where the Schutzstaffel (SS) soldiers killed 642 people. But the biggest one-stage Nazis punitive action against civilians happened on March 1, 1943 in the Ukrainian village Koriukivka (the Chernihiv region). Nearly seven thousand people were shot or burned alive in this Ukrainian village!
During the Great Patriotic War the Chernihiv region paid a huge human cost. From September 1941 to September 1943 invaders killed 127 000 people. Around 42 thousand people were taken to work in Germany, was burned 61 settlements.
From the first months of occupation, the Nazis began the repression in the Koriukivka village. In January 1942 the occupants shot all the Jews (about 300 people) in February - 131 partisan relatives and 12 Gypsies.
Morning of March 1, 1943, after the partisan raid against Nazis garrison in Koriukivka, on the order of the Nazis General Hoizenberg, the Germans punitive detachment surrounded the village and began to exterminate the civilians. Under the pretext of checking documents, the people drove to the premises of restaurant, theater, club, clinic, two schools and the churchyard. The victims were shot by the parties of 50-100 people, regardless of gender and age. March 2, 1943 the buildings stuffed with corpses (only in the restaurant more than 500 bodies) began to burn, but the killings continued.
"My little daughter was lying on my chest when we started to shot at the restaurant. We were driven there like cattle at the slaughterhouse ... Fascist shot into my eye ... I do not remember anything else. Three of my children were killed. They even haven’t been buried ... they were burned by the cursed torturers "- remember Eugen Rymar.
Punishers scoured the village, took the people and thrown them alive into burning houses. Vira Sylchenko, who hid in a haycock, saw how Fascists threw into the fire her mother, sister and sister-in-law. At the same time the large groups of people had been shooting with machine guns at the churchyard. By the end of the day March 2, 1943 the Koriukivka was completely burned.
Koriukivka survivors hid into the forest, some of them, mostly the elderly, a few days later came back to the village. But on March 9, 1943 the Nazis appeared again. Olds was driven out from their homes, brought to a shed, poured with kerosene and burned. People was pushed into the plant furnace for burning bricks and burned ...
According to the conclusion of the Regional Commission on the Investigation of the crimes of the Nazis in Koriukivka, during two days Fascists brutally killed at least 6,700 people (5,612 bodies remain unidentified). From 1300 Koriukivka’s buildings survived just ten.
Tragedy Koriukivka was only an episode of realization of the major inhuman Nazi Reich - plan "Ost". The first fully published only in 2009, it was a program of mass ethnic cleansing of the population of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Hitler's part of a global plan "exemption living space" for Germans and other "Germanic peoples" at the expense of territories of "lower races" - first of all Slavs .
In March 2013 it was marked the 70th anniversary of the Koriukivka’s tragedy. In order to commemorate the innocent tortured compatriots, the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych signed a Decree "On measures in connection with the 70th anniversary of the Koryukivka’s tragedy" # 925/2011.
The next measures are stipulated by the Decree:
- The construction of the memorial complex in Koriukivka for the remembrance of the inhabitants of Ukrainian settlements killed by the Fascist occupants;
- The conducting of the scientific conference devoted to the partisan movement in Ukraine during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, with assistance of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine;
- The implementation of the research work on the tragic facts of the period of Nazi occupation of Ukraine in 1941 - 1944 years.