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Naliboki massacre
Naliboki self-defense leaders in a meeting with a Soviet NKVD officer (far left) prior to being massacred
Location	Naliboki German-occupied Poland
Date	May 8, 1943
Weapons	Automatic and semi-automatic weapons
Deaths	129
Victims	Poles
Perpetrators	Soviet

The Naliboki massacre (Template:Lang-pl) was a raid on the urban settlement of Naliboki (modern-day Belarus) by Soviet partisans in which 129 Poles were killed.

Background

Prior to 1939, Naliboki had some 4,000 residents, including several hundred Jews, who were driven out of the town following the German advance during Operation Barbarossa.

Following Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany, the Soviet resistance forces operated in the Naliboki Forest behind the German front lines of eastern Poland. Their NKVD leaders were sent in by Moscow headquarters in 1942 with full access to military hardware. The local members came from the Red Army soldiers of all ethnicities trapped into an encirclement by German troops, and pro-Soviet Belarusians as well as Ukrainians. All daily provisions were requisitioned from civilian settlements, including Naliboki.

In August 1942 a self-defence unit was formed in the village by the order of Germans, and at the same time the police station in the settlement was removed.

Some of the members of the self-defense were members of Home Army, who used this membership as a cover. Soviet partisans were aware of this, and in March and April 1943 they arranged two meetings with the Polish self-defence leaders. During the talks the Soviet partisans insisted the Poles joined them, but the POles refused. However an agreement was signed with the Poles represented by Eugeniusz Klimowicz, about mutual truce and fight against robbers hiding in the forest. However the Soviet partisans violated the truce.

The raid

According to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, on the night of May 8–9, 1943, the Soviet partisans raided Naliboki from the depths of the Naliboki Forest. A few of the Soviet attackers, including one political officer, were killed by the defenders. Polish men were pulled from their homes, and then shot individually or in small groups. Many farmhouses were set on fire. The mass looting followed. Also killed during the Soviet attack were three Polish women, several teenagers and a ten-year-old boy. The town's church was set on fire along with the public school, fire station, and the post office. The raid took two to three hours. The Soviet commandant delivered a report to NKVD about the killing of 250 people, the capture of weapons, round up of 100 cows and 78 horses, and the destruction of a German garrison. However, according to the IPN the number of victims was lower (now estimated at 129); no Germans were present and none killed; only one Belarusian auxiliary policeman happened to be sleeping in the town during the night of the attack. The investigation has been viewed by historians as Historical revisionism.

Mistaken association with Bielski partisans

Some of the residents said they recognized former Jewish residents of the town among the attackers. Some have associated these Jews with the Bielski partisans, a well known Jewish unit which operated in the Naliboki forest, with the release of the movie Defiance in 2008 further prompting such calls. However, members of the unit denied they took part, the unit moved to Naliboki only in August 1943, and the unit does not appear in the Soviet documentation which specifies that the "Stalin" brigade carried out the operation. Holocaust historian Nechama Tec said the allegations were "total lies" and that they "underline the anti-Semitic tendencies of the writers and the distortion of history".

See also

• List of massacres in Belarus
• List of massacres in Poland

References

1. ^ Anna Gałkiewicz, prokurator Oddziałowej KŚZpNP w Łodzi (14 May 2003). "Omówienie dotychczasowych ustaleń w śledztwach w sprawach o zbrodnie w Nalibokach i Koniuchach". Spotkanie Klubu Historycznego im. gen. Stefana Roweckiego - "Grota" w Instytucie Pamięci Narodowej. Warszawa: Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, KŚZpNP. Archived from the original on April 29, 2009. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
2. ^ IPN (November 2013). "Śledztwo w sprawie zbrodni popełnionych przez partyzantów radzieckich na żołnierzach Armii Krajowej i ludności cywilnej na terenie powiatów Stołpce i Wołożyn woj. nowogródzkie (S 17/01/Zk)". Śledztwa w biegu - Zbrodnie komunistyczne. Instytut Pamieci Narodowej. Retrieved 25 January 2014.
3. ^ Kazimierz Krajewski. "Ginęli, ratując Żydów" [Dying while Rescuing Jews] (PDF). „Opor”? „Odwet”? Czy po prostu „polityka historyczna”? O Żydach w partyzantce sowieckiej na Kresach II RP. NR 3 (98), March 2009. Warsaw: IPN Bulletin: 99–120. ISSN 1641-9561. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-02-22. {{cite journal}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
4. Geraldine Bereziuk Lowrey (March 5, 2015). "Book Review". The Last Day of Naliboki By Mieczyslaw Klimowicz (American Literary Press, 2009). The Am-Pol Eagle, Cheektowaga, NY. At the time, Mieczyslaw Klimowicz, the son of Eugeniusz Klimowicz, was in his teens.
5. IPN (1 March 2002), Investigation Reports on Koniuchy and Naliboki, Institute of National Memory, retrieved 19 January 2014
6. ^ Polish Investigators Tie World War II Partisans to Naliboki Massacre, Haaretz / Forward, 14 Aug 2008
7. IPN. "Komunikat dot. śledztwa w sprawie zbrodni popełnionych przez partyzantów sowieckich w latach 1942–1944 na terenie byłego województwa nowogródzkiego" (in Polish). Instytut Pamięci Narodowej. Retrieved 7 February 2018.

External links

• Massacres in Koniuchy and Naliboki
• Naliboki Catholic cemetery

• 1943 in Poland
• Jewish Belarusian history
• Jewish Polish history
• Massacres in Belarus
• Massacres in Poland
• Poland–Soviet Union relations
• Soviet partisans
• Mass murder in 1943
• Soviet World War II crimes in Poland
• World War II crimes in Belarus
• May 1943 events