ZINYAKI

Shchuchin District, Grodno Region
Status: village destroyed · memorial complex (1988)

Before the war

Before the war, Zinyaki had 86 houses and 433 residents. The village is now remembered as one of the "burned villages" of Belarus.

The Tragedy

January 22, 1944 – Zinyaki was destroyed in a punitive operation because of its connection with partisans active in the area. According to archival material cited in the local press, around 900 Germans, together with police and gendarmes from Novy Dvor and Bershty, surrounded the village, drove residents into five barns, and burned them alive.

The operation destroyed 82 houses; 419 villagers from Zinyaki and 65 people from nearby villages were killed. Later sources say that the burial passport records 484 victims in total, and the names of 315 buried residents have been commemorated.

484
total victims
82
houses destroyed
433
pre-war residents

Zinyaki · then and now

Zinyaki before 1944
⚫ Zinyaki before the tragedy — a peaceful farming village
Zinyaki memorial today
🕊️ Memorial complex (established 1988) — sculpture of a mother holding a child

Survivors (known witnesses)

Only a very small number of people are recorded as surviving the destruction of the village. Available archival materials mostly preserve victim counts, while names of survivors were often not fully documented.

  • Galina Vasilyevna Kuzmich – born in 1917, later gave testimony describing the massacre in Zinyaki and how villagers were piled into barns in layers before being burned alive.
  • Several children reportedly survived by hiding before the round-up, but many names were not preserved in publicly accessible summaries.
  • Some residents were absent from the village that day and returned only after the punishers had left.
They carried the memory of January 22, 1944 for the rest of their lives.

Voices of survivors and witnesses

“Bodies were stacked inside threshing barns, covered with straw, and more victims were placed above them until the barns were full. Then the buildings were set on fire.”
— Galina Vasilyevna Kuzmich, survivor
“73 years have passed, but every day I see the picture of German punishers walking through the village, driving neighbors into barns, the crying of women and children, the shots.”
— Nikolai Zhurun, who was a child at the time

What happened in Zinyaki

According to documented postwar investigations, around 800 German troops surrounded the village, separated men from women and children, shot children in front of their parents, then burned villagers alive in two barns. The village of 82 houses was destroyed, with 484 victims.

Return to the ashes: Those who came back after the massacre found only burned ruins where homes had stood.

Aftermath and memory

After the massacre, the dead were buried in four graves. Some residents survived, including Mikhail/Nikolai Zhurun, who was a child at the time and later left memories of the tragedy. A monument was installed in 1967, and in 1988 a memorial complex was built; its central image is a sculpture of a mother holding a child.

The village was never fully rebuilt Memorial complex with mother and child sculpture Commemorated in the Khatyn memorial
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