A family from Ukraine built a chapel in memory of soldiers who died during the Great Patriotic War in the Dubrovno district

May 7, Vitebsk / Sergey Kochetov - BELTA /. The Zvonarev family from the Ukrainian city of Poltava has built a chapel at their own expense near the Rylionki memorial complex in the Dubrovno district, where their relative died during the Great Patriotic War. The chapel consecration ceremony will take place on May 8 with the participation of relatives of the soldiers of the 251st Rifle Division, which participated in the liberation of the district and are buried in the military cemetery, Anatoly Burdo, chairman of the Vitebsk youth public association "Military-Patriotic Club "Poisk" (Search), told a BELTA correspondent. The chapel has become the second memorial object that the Zvonarev family is erecting at the site where the uncle of the head of the family, Anatoly Zvonarev, Nikolai Serikov, possibly died. As established during the search, Nikolai Serikov, a soldier of the 119th Rifle Regiment of the 251st Guards Division, was wounded in battles near the village of Redki in December 1943. He was sent to the 269th Separate Medical Battalion, which was deployed near the village of Rylionki in the Dubrovno district, where he subsequently possibly died of his wounds and was buried in a mass grave. Having received information about the fate of his relative, Anatoly Zvonarev initiated the installation of a monument in memory of medical sanitary battalions in Rylionki in 2010. Now the Zvonarevs have fully financed the construction of the chapel in memory of the fallen soldiers in the area of the memorial complex. Today, a tradition of creating memorial objects by relatives of Red Army soldiers who died during the Great Patriotic War in the region is emerging in the Vitebsk region. For example, in 2009, a monument to the soldiers of the 251st Division was erected near the village of Sharki in the Vitebsk district on the initiative of the Grigoryev family from Lipetsk, Russia. Their father and grandfather died in battles for Vitebsk. The majority of the fallen soldiers of the 251st Rifle Division were reburied in the post-war period in the 1990s thanks to the active work of Vitebsk search parties. A people's museum of military glory of the Vitebsk Order of the Red Banner, Order of Suvorov 215th Rifle Division has been established at Vitebsk Vocational School No. 19, which houses the "Poisk" military-patriotic club. The club carries out work to perpetuate the memory of fallen soldiers and search for relatives of the deceased. It is the relatives and loved ones of the soldiers who provide great assistance to the club's activists in their search efforts. -0-