"Roads of Burned Villages": A regional memorial event will be held in Dokshytsy district on June 22
Auto clubs of the region will participate in the event. Representatives from each district will bring a map of the burned villages of their region and will tell how many of them were destroyed by punitive detachments and how many never rose from the ashes. Before the rally-requiem, guests of the event will be given a tour of the memorial complex, built on the site of the burned village of Shunevka.
Not a trace remained of the village when punitive detachments broke into it early in the morning on May 22, 1943. Civilians were herded into a barn and set on fire. People met a martyr's death, burning alive. Fascists threw small children aged 1 to 6 into a well. 26 homesteads were razed to the ground, and the lives of 66 people were taken. Only three Shunevka residents miraculously managed to escape. These were seven-year-old Volodya Rudkovsky, who found a loophole in the burning barn and slipped away, fleeing into the forest under a hail of bullets. And the villager Konstantin Ananich with his daughter Sonechka, who were hiding in a dugout in the forest and remained unnoticed when the fascists were combing the area in search of Shunevka residents. Sofia Ananich (Shablovskaya) later lived in Minsk and for many years visited her small homeland – the village, of which only sorrowful memories remained. She told the younger generation how she managed to survive and what atrocities the invaders committed on Belarusian land.
Participants of the event will also be shown a theatrical performance depicting the peaceful life of Shunevka and its tragedy. After the rally-requiem, representatives of the auto clubs will hand over the maps of the burned villages to the youth of the Dokshitsy district as a symbol of the continuity of generations. These maps will then be sent to the Begoml Museum of People's Glory. The concluding mournful chord of the event will be the lighting of memorial candles.