OLA

January 14, 1944 — Orthodox New Year (old calendar). Residents had returned from the forests to celebrate – to bake bread, visit family, and spend time at home. That morning, the punitive forces entered the village.

Some residents spotted the Germans approaching. Those in the outermost houses began running toward the forest. One man recalls being the last to run, with a German shepherd chasing him through deep snow. The dog knocked him down, he got up, kept running – he survived only because the German didn't risk shooting, not wanting to harm his own dog.

The killers' identities remain unclear. There was reportedly a security battalion and presumably an SS unit. A surviving witness traveled to a 1945 trial in Bryansk where two German officers were prosecuted for war crimes in the Bobruisk region, but archival documents from that trial contain no details about Ola.