Janka Filistovič (; 14 January 1926 – 22 November 1953) was an active participant in the Belarusian independence movement and a member of the underground anti-Soviet resistance in

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 ...

in the 1950s.

Early years

Filistovič was born into a large farming family in the village of Paniacičy, Wilejka county, Wilno Voivodeship of the

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 7 October 1918 and 6 October 1939. The state was established in the final stage of World War I ...

(nowadays, Viliejka district, Minsk region of

). 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 ...

his father was arrested by the Soviet authorities as a

kulak Kulak ( ; rus, кула́к, r=kulák, p=kʊˈɫak, a=Ru-кулак.ogg; plural: кулаки́, ''kulakí'', 'fist' or 'tight-fisted'), also kurkul () or golchomag (, plural: ), was the term which was used to describe peasants who owned over ...

and incarcerated in a local prison until the beginning of the

German-Soviet War The Eastern Front, also known as the Great Patriotic War (term), Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union and its successor states, and the German–Soviet War in modern Germany and Ukraine, was a Theater (warfare), theatre of World War II ...

. To avoid deportation to Germany as an

Ostarbeiter ' (, "Eastern worker") was a Nazi German designation for foreign slave workers gathered from occupied Central and Eastern Europe to perform forced labor in Germany during World War II. The Germans started deporting civilians at the beginning ...

, Filistovič joined the

Belarusian Auxiliary Police The Belarusian Auxiliary Police () was a German force established in July 1941 in occupied Belarus, staffed by local collaborators. In western Belarus, auxiliary police were created in the form of Schutzmannschaften units, while in the east th ...

in 1943 but was not involved in any wartime atrocities.Арлоў, Уладзімер (2020).
ІМЁНЫ СВАБОДЫ (Бібліятэка Свабоды. ХХІ стагодзьдзе.)
' 'Uładzimir Arłou. The Names of Freedom (The Library of Freedom. ХХІ century.)''">Uładzimir_Arłou.html" ;"title="'Uładzimir Arłou">'Uładzimir Arłou. The Names of Freedom (The Library of Freedom. ХХІ century.)''(PDF) (in Belarusian) (4-е выд., дап. ed.). Радыё Свабодная Эўропа / Радыё Свабода - Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. pp. 244–245.

Life in exile

After the war, Filistovič moved to France. He studied history at the Sorbonne (France) and Leuven (Belgium) universities, published the magazine " Maladość” (“Youth") and was one of the leaders of a Belarusian youth organisation in France. In 1951 he became a member of the

Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic The Rada of the Belarusian People's Republic (, ) was the governing body of the Belarusian Democratic Republic. Since 1919, the Rada BNR has been in exile where it has preserved its existence among the Belarusian diaspora as an advocacy group ...

. In March 1951 he volunteered for a covert operation with the Western intelligence to be dropped off inside Soviet Belarus to establish a contact with the local anti-Soviet partisans and expand the local anti-Soviet resistance.

Covert operation inside Soviet Belarus

After three months of training at the Kaufberen base near Munich, Filistovič was parachuted by the US airforce in the Viliejka district on in September 1951. On the ground he created a small partisan unit and sought to expand its ranks through anti-Soviet propaganda. However, on 5 September of the following year Filistovič‘s unit was attacked by the Soviet security forces and on 9 September he was captured. Filistovič‘s trial began on 17 October 1953 during which he passionately defended his mission and a vision of an independent non-Soviet Belarus:

"The Belarusian people, having such a glorious past, have full rights to exist, and soon the Belarusians themselves will show it to the world."
"Our ... goal is to defend the pure, passionate, feelings of love for the Fatherland inherent in the Belarusian youth. We aimed to preserve in the hearts of our youth valuable... elements, helping them to find strength, harden and dedicate themselves to their homeland. taining faith in the future, we must boldly look forward, knowing that the truth will prevail."

Death and memory

Filistovič was sentenced to death and executed on 22 November 1953. The place of his burial is not known. While excluded from history books in Lukashenka’s Belarus, he is commemorated by the

Belarusian diaspora The Belarusian diaspora () refers to emigrants from Belarus which includes their descendants. According to different researchers, there are between 2.5 and 3.5 million Belarusian descendants living outside the territory of the Republic of Bel ...

as a hero who “return d... to Belarus from the West in order to fight for

’ independence”.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Filistovic, Janka 1926 births 1953 deaths Belarusian Auxiliary Police Belarusian anti-communists Belarusian independence movement Members of the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic Executed Belarusian collaborators with Nazi Germany Executed spies People executed by the Soviet Union by firearm