Surkanty (; ; ) is a village in Voranava District, Grodno Region,

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

. It is part of Boltsishki

selsoviet A selsoviet (; , ; ) is the shortened name for Selsky soviet, i.e., rural council (; ; ). It has three closely related meanings: *The administration (''soviet (council), soviet'') of a certain rural area. *The territorial subdivision administered ...

History

In the interwar period, the village was situated in

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

, in the Nowogródek Voivodeship, in the Lidzki County, in the Raduń Commune. After the

Soviet invasion of Poland The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military conflict by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Second Polish Republic, Poland from the east, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Polan ...

in 1939, the village became part of the

BSSR The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR, Byelorussian SSR or Byelorussia; ; ), also known as Soviet Belarus or simply Belarus, was a republic of the Soviet Union (USSR). It existed between 1920 and 1922 as an independent state, and ...

. In the years 1941-1944 it was under German occupation. Then the village was again in the BSSR. From 1991 in the Republic of Belarus.

Battle of Surkonty

On August 21, 1944, a battle took place in the village between an

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

battalion and a partisan unit of the

Home Army The Home Army (, ; abbreviated AK) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) established in the ...

under the command of Maciej Kalenkiewicz "Kotwicz", who died there. The funeral of the deceased Polish soldiers, for fear of the Soviets, took place not in the local cemetery, but in the field, near the cemetery of the January insurgents. The local residents did not allow the grave to be plowed for the kolkhoz. On September 8, 1991, the cemetery of Polish soldiers was opened. The inscriptions on the crosses were made in Polish, but the authorities did not agree to write with whom the deceased fought. On August 25, 2022, the Belarusian authorities leveled the cemetery using heavy machinery.

References

Villages in Belarus Populated places in Grodno region Voranava district {{Belarus-geo-stub