The «In Glory of the Common Victory» event was held in Liozno
On this day in 1943, the Red Army liberated the first city in the Vitebsk region. Then the front got stuck here for nine long months. Medics stood here alongside the army. Today, a memorial sign was unveiled at the site of the 467th field mobile hospital of the 33rd Army of the Western Front. Ivan Dubinkov, a relative of junior lieutenant Nikolai Lashkov, who died in these places, came from Russia for the unveiling in the village of Olkhovik. He said:
— Last year, after the opening of the renovated "Adamenskaya Gorka" memorial, my sister and I visited this place. A local resident showed us where the hospital tents were located and the place where soldiers and officers who died from their wounds were buried. Their remains were later moved to the memorial, and the woman lamented that there was no memorial sign in Olkhovik, only memory remained. And then we decided to definitely erect such a sign in the village.
An hour later, a solemn rally in honor of the city's liberation and the "In the Name of the Common Victory" event took place at the central military burial ground in Liozno. Soil collected from all military burial sites in the district was brought to the central monument in six oil lamps—one from each rural council. The chairmen of the rural councils handed over the oil lamps to the military, who then took the soil for safekeeping to the district military history museum. In the Liozno district, there are 85 military burial sites from the Great Patriotic War period; over 32,000 Soviet soldiers lie in this land forever. The names of every fifth one of them are still unknown. And how many fallen soldiers are still undiscovered, no one knows.
These places suffered greatly during the occupation—every second resident of the district perished, hundreds were shot, tortured, or driven into slave labor in Germany. During the war, 196 villages were burned down. Liozno region also has its own Khatyn—the village of Astashevo.
Before the war, the district was home to approximately 36,000 people. The Great Patriotic War claimed the lives of almost every second person. Over 70 years of peaceful life, the population has not recovered — currently, there are just under 17,000 people here. In Liozno itself, 6.6 thousand people live.