In his 2009 study Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht, Dieter Pohl devotes a chapter to the deporations in the Azaryčy region. He places the events in Azaryčy in the wider context of German occupation policy and the general crimes committed by the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union. He shows that the deportations and the treatment of the civilian population were part of a systematic policy of violence and oppression based on economic exploitation and racist ideology. Pohl considered the deportations of Belarusian civilians to be
„eines der schwersten Verbrechen der Wehrmacht gegen Zivilisten überhaupt.“1 (German original)
“one of the most serious crimes ever committed by the Wehrmacht against civilians.” (Translation of the German original)
- Pohl, Dieter: Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht. Deutsche Militärbesatzung und einheimische Bevölkerung in der Sowjetunion 1941–1944, p. 328. ↩︎
