Is it true that during the Great Patriotic War, one German soldier wrote down in the diary: “We will never defeat the Russians, because their children fight like heroes”?

This quote is often given in the stories about the feat of Pioneer-hero Tikhon Baran. We checked its reliability.

In Russian -speaking social networks and the media, you can often meet publications about the pioneer of Tikhona Baran, who in 1944 repeated the feat of Ivan Susanin. The punishers who destroyed his village left the boy alive to show them the way to the partisan detachment hiding in the forests. However, instead, he led them into the swamp in the forest. Having guessed about deception, one of the Nazis shot the pioneer, but it was too late - the soldiers got lost and then died. Some publications claim that the feat of Tikhon Baran became known from the words of the only surviving soldier of this detachment who was captured. In his diary, the partisans allegedly read the phrase "We will never defeat the Russians, because their children fight like heroes." According to another version, not only this phrase was recorded in the diary, but in general the whole story, but found it after the war - and only then they learned about the feat of the ram. Such publications can be found in Media, Facebook, "VKontakte" Blogs, on YouTube, on sites libraries, Museums And universities.

During the Great Patriotic War, children often participated in the fighting - in partisan detachments, underground anti -fascist cells, as well as “children of the regiment”. Many of these children were awarded with orders and medals (even the titles were focused on six Hero of the Soviet Union). 

One of these young partisans was Tikhon Baran, a boy from the Belarusian village of Bike. According to the article "Family of Patriots" published in the local history collection "MROCT: Gistoryka-Dakumontal Khronika Pruzhanskag Ryong"(Minsk, 1990), his entire family collaborated with the anti -fascist committee to combat the invaders. In a secret dugout near their house since 1942, an underground printing house worked. In the summer of 1943, arrests began in bikes. Tikhon was arrested, his mother and younger sisters (father and older brother managed to go to the partisans). The children were later released back to the village, and the mother was sent to the concentration camp (she survived the imprisonment and returned to the stories after the war).

In the winter of 1944, when the liberation of Belarus was already going on, German troops almost completely destroyed the village. How this happened, can be judged by a memorandum that the Brest Anti -Fascist Committee sent the Secretary of the Brest underground regional committee of the Communist Party (b) B Sergey Sikorsky on February 29, 1944. It said: “During the burning of the village of Bikey and the burning of 957 Soviet citizens, we give the following facts of the atrocities of German monsters. By the morning of January 23, brutal bandits broke into the village and made a monstrous bloody reprisal. The entire population was driven into sheds, then separately women, children and men. Men were shot by groups of six to seven people, the wounded, who lost consciousness, they threw alive into the hole. Women were burned in sheds. A terrible, painful death was arranged for children. 15 dogs were set on them. Croeded children set fire alive. On the street illuminated by the conflagration, the dogs dragged the young children torn by them ”(quote from the book"The tragedy of Belarusian villages, 1941–1944", Minsk-Moscow, 2011). The memories of several eyewitnesses of the tragedy have survived to this day - first of all Stepan Shabuni And his son Nikolaiwho managed to escape. At first, when the inhabitants of the village led to execution, they hid in the hay, and after that, when the sourais and the sheds were set on fire, they fled to the gardens. The memories and father of Tikhon Baran have been preserved - Maxim Ivanovichwho at that time was in the partisan detachment.

The name of Tikhon Baran is not found in these memories. “Verified” failed to establish when exactly and under what circumstances it became known about the feat of the boy. In a biographical certificate prepared by the Brest Regional Library, Approvedthat already in 1954 it was included in the book of honor of the pioneer organization. However, then she only Approved, and to introduce to it “the names of the best pioneers, whose exploits and affairs serve as an unfading example for all pioneers and schoolchildren of the Soviet Union” Started Only a year later. In any case, his name became known to the broad masses only in the late 1960s-early 1970s, when, first in the Belarusian, and then in Russian, the story of Galina Vasilevskaya "was published"Drawing in the snow". It was this artistic work that became the main source of information about the fate of Tikhon Baran for modern publications. Vasilevskaya is just mentioned the diary of a captive German. However, she talks about this story as an oral tradition: 

“And Tikhon? The boy returned to his mother already from the legend. They say that only one German from that detachment of punishers managed to escape. He wandered through the forest for a long time. He was caught by the partisans. In the diary of a German soldier, they read the following words: "We will never defeat the Russians, because even their children are fighting and dying like heroes." That German told the partisans about the boy from the village of Bikey, the little partisan intelligence officer Tikhona Baran, who never heard about Ivan Susanin ... and he repeated his feat. "

On the website "Belarusian villages burned during the Great Patriotic War", dated January 18, 1949 was published Interrogation protocol German prisoner of war Wilhelm Schultte. He called the names of several of his colleagues on the Caesar detachment, who conducted a punitive operation in the village of Bikey (he denied his own participation in it). The protocol of another interrogation Shultte was published in the book "The tragedy of Belarusian villages, 1941–1944". None of them mention any diaries-neither Schulta himself, nor any of his colleagues. It is not said about the diary in the already mentioned collection "Memorial", Not in the article" The Feat of the Partisan Family "(" Peasant ", No. 5 for 1971), nor in the collection of essays"Hero pioneers"(Minsk, 1985). Belarusian State Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War In response to the request “verified” he replied that they stored a letter written in 1962 to the then director of the museum S. R. Schutsky Father Tikhon. This letter describes in detail the history of the feat of Tikhon, but the diary of a German soldier is not mentioned there.

The diary begins to constantly appear in publications about Tikhon Baran only in the 2010s. Especially a lot of publications appeared after 2015, when it was Announced plans to make a feature film about the Pioneer-hero (in the end everything was limited teaser). The plot of the planned tape was built just around the diary of a German soldier. At the same time, the director of the film Irina Brel clarified that she did not know anything about the real existence of this document. “To confirm many facts about the feat of the Belarusian boy, we lack only the diary of an unknown German soldier. The phrase was written in it: “We will never defeat this people, because their children fight like heroes,” which carries a huge meaning. We believe that there is a diary. Many resources are connected to search for it, including a request to Germany, ” - She said She is in an interview. 

At the same time, it is logical to assume that a prisoner of war diary would hardly have been in Germany. Most likely he, like other Similar Documents would be stored in some of the archives of Russia or Belarus-if not the original, then at least a typewritten copy. Some Internet publications telling about the diary, Reference For an article in the magazine "Family and School" in 1980. However, the archive of this magazine Available online, and in none of the numbers for 1980, “verified” did not find an article about Tikhon Baran. 

Thus, the source of the quote allegedly found in the diary of a German soldier is a work of art, the author of which refers to oral tradition. None of the available documents on the tragedy in the village of bikes are mentioned, as well as in publications about Tikhon Baran until the 2000s.

Photo on the cover: frame from the tizer of the film "Helden"

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

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2. Did Churchill say that Russia is never so strong and so weak as it seems?
3. Is it true that Hitler has gathered a significant part of European countries to fight against the Soviet Union?