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Civil society activists lay flowers at place of removed cross in commemoration of villagers massacred by Soviet guerillas during World War II

Members of the Belarusian Voluntary Society for Historic and Cultural Heritage Protection on May 8 laid flowers at the place where a cross had stood commemorating the peaceful villagers massacred by Soviet anti-Nazi guerillas during World War II, BelaPAN reports.

The Society put up the 11.5-foot high wooden cross near a Catholic cemetery in the village of Drazhna near Staryya Darohi, Minsk region, on April 19. A few days later, the cross disappeared and opposition politician Vyachaslaw Siwchyk, who participated in the cross-erecting ceremony, was sentenced to 15 days in jail on a charge of organizing an unsanctioned demonstration.

The cross was rumored to have been removed by order of local authorities, but Vasil Usik, chairman of the Staryya Darohi District Executive Committee, denied the local government’s involvement. However, he told BelaPAN on April 28 that the cross was being kept on the territory of an Orthodox church in the village of Zaluzha, a few miles from Drazhna.

After laying flowers in Drazhna, Mr. Siwchyk and other members of the Society visited Zaluzha but failed to find the cross there. The church was locked and its priest was not found at home.

According to researcher Viktar Khursik, who also took part in the cross-erecting ceremony, on the early morning of April 14, 1943, Soviet partisans indiscriminately stabbed and shot Drazhna residents to death and burned alive people, including women and small children, after a failed attack on a nearby garrison of Nazi police collaborators, in which the partisans suffered heavy casualties. The partisans burned 37 houses. Twenty-five villagers, including 15 women and children, were slain. A tablet attached to the cross bore the names of the killed.