An online lesson on the genocide of the Belarusian people during the Great Patriotic War was held at the Vitebsk Region Media Center
Before the event, participants familiarized themselves with an exhibition dedicated to the victims of the genocide of the Belarusian people during the Great Patriotic War and in the post-war period. The excursion for students and pupils was conducted by Lyudmila Pozdnyakova, assistant prosecutor of Vitebsk.
The open online lesson, according to the tradition of the Media Center, began with a random question generator.
"What does war mean to you?" - was the question posed to Igor Ukrainets, prosecutor of the Vitebsk region. He emphasized that war brings devastation, hunger, and death. War is human suffering.
After all the experts answered the quick questions, the regional prosecutor spoke about the progress of the criminal case on the genocide of the Belarusian people during the Great Patriotic War.
As Igor Vladimirovich noted, the information obtained from living witnesses and eyewitnesses of those terrible events is invaluable. For the criminal process, it is fundamental evidence of the genocide of our people. Video recordings of interrogations leave no doubt, even for skeptics and opponents trying to rewrite history, regarding the historical truth about the tragic events that took place on our land during the war.
- In the Vitebsk region alone, at least 101 places of forced detention for civilians and prisoners of war were created, which were effectively death camps, where a significant number of the population was exterminated by creating unbearable conditions, - noted the regional prosecutor. - During the investigation, information about at least 67 previously unknown mass burial sites of civilians was established. Excavations have been carried out in three of them. Forensic examinations have been appointed to determine the age and circumstances of the deaths.
Polina Shidlovskaya, a student at the Vitebsk Cadet School, asked: "What other measures are planned within the framework of the criminal case on genocide in the Vitebsk region?"
- This year, together with the 52nd search battalion, search operations are planned in six previously unknown burial sites of civilians, - said Igor Ukrainets. - In particular, in two locations in the Senno district, as well as in Liozno, Glubokoe, and Sharkovshchina districts. At the same time, we pay tribute to the victims. The republican subbotnik is approaching, which will be held on April 22. We will be landscaping the sites where villages destroyed by the fascists were previously located. We will also continue archival work, the scope of which is immense.
Other speakers of the online lesson also spoke about the importance of remembering the victims of the war and learning lessons from those tragic events.
For example, historian Artemy Vasilievich spoke about the first days of the occupation of Vitebsk. He dwelled in detail on the tragedy of the Jewish ghetto in our city, on the mass extermination of people of this nationality.
- During the existence of the ghetto, fascists destroyed and tortured more than 20,000 Jews, - said Artemy Vasilievich. - The majority of them were children and adolescents under 15 years of age, as well as elderly citizens.
Students of educational institutions spoke at the lesson about the large-scale work they are carrying out to perpetuate the memory of the victims of fascism.
- Our school is implementing the "Memory of Generations" project together with the Beshenkovichi District Prosecutor's Office on the genocide of the population of Belarus during the Great Patriotic War, - said Yana Belko, an eighth-grader from the Rzhavskaya kindergarten-basic school of the Beshenkovichi District. - Its goal is to create an interactive map of the Beshenkovichi District, which contains information about the victims of genocide during the Great Patriotic War. As part of the project, we created such a map, on which we mark burned villages and monuments with dots. My great-grandmother survived the war in the village of Rzhavka. From communicating with her, I learned a lot about the horrors of the Nazi occupation. It touched me emotionally. I feel very sorry for the residents of Belarus, who had to endure so much for the sake of Victory. And I wanted to learn more about this war, and in general, about the heroic pages of the history of the Soviet people.
At the end of the event, eighth-graders from Rzhavskaya school, as well as Yulia Orshanskaya, a student from Secondary School No. 15 in Vitebsk, were awarded letters of gratitude from the Vitebsk Regional Prosecutor's Office for their work in perpetuating the memory of the victims of fascism.
Photo by Petr Chimkovsky.