About 1.9 thousand surnames of Fatherland defenders who died in the Vitebsk region were identified in 2010

April 1, Vitebsk / Olga Bogacheva - BELTA /. About 1.9 thousand names of Fatherland defenders buried in the Vitebsk region have been identified in 2010, the deputy military commissar of the Vitebsk regional military commissariat, Sergey Olsevich, told a BELTA correspondent. Field excavations were carried out in the Gorodok, Beshenkovichi, Braslav, Vitebsk, Polotsk, Dokshitsy, Verkhnedvinsk, and Tolochin districts. During the search operations, personnel of military unit No. 28443 worked on 27 search sites, recovered 210 remains of soldiers who died in the Great Patriotic War, and additionally identified 11 new names of the fallen. Last year, one previously unrecorded military burial site was documented. Significant work has also been done to perpetuate the memory of the fallen heroes of the Great Patriotic War, noted Sergey Olsevich. Thus, in July and October last year, three major reburial ceremonies took place. Near the urban settlement of Beshenkovichi, the remains of 26 soldiers were reburied in a mass grave, and at the cemetery in the village of Kopti, Vitebsk region, the remains of 69 people were reburied. At the military cemetery on Titov Street in Vitebsk, the remains of 84 servicemen were interred. The search work to identify the names of the fallen was carried out by military commissariats in cooperation with local authorities, public associations, veteran and youth organizations within the framework of the regional plan of measures to perpetuate the memory of the fallen Fatherland defenders and patriotic education of youth. In total, there are 1238 military burial sites in the Vitebsk region, including the only officer cemetery in Belarus in the village of Stasevo (Liozno district), where 384.5 thousand Fatherland defenders are buried. Almost 207 thousand of them are unknown. -0-