An exhibition dedicated to the Leningrad blockade survivors is planned to be created in Vitebsk

The anniversary of the lifting of the blockade of heroic Leningrad, January 27, 1944, is approaching. This day is forever etched in the hearts of those who bravely fought for life and freedom during 872 terrible days marked by hunger, cold, loss, and suffering. Today, 106 Leningrad блокадники (survivors of the siege) live in the Vitebsk region, 46 of whom reside in Vitebsk. They are remembered, honored, and invited to meet with schoolchildren and young people. However, time passes, and with it, the people who were direct participants in those events.

In the regional center, an idea was born today to create a permanent exhibition dedicated to the feat of the people of Leningrad. The premises for this noble cause are provided by the Vitebsk city organization of internationalist soldiers "Bratstvo" (Brotherhood) of the Belarusian Association of Soldiers-Internationalists. Organizational efforts were undertaken by Tatyana Khramtsova, the daughter of a блокадница. She had nurtured this idea for a long time and began to implement it by collecting household items and handicrafts related to her mother, childhood, and that era. It turned into something like a small ethnographic museum in her home. But Tatyana Alexandrovna did not stop there, because, in addition to cultural and everyday heritage, it is even more important to preserve the memory of the heroic and tragic pages of the Great Patriotic War – the Siege of Leningrad. Tatyana Khramtsova cannot recall her mother's and grandmother's stories about those days without tears. She looks with pain at old photographs where they are still alive.

— Here are my grandparents — Yakov and Matryona Abramenko, — she says, — here is my mother Vera Tereshkina, at the beginning of the war she was 4 years old, my sister Dusya was only one and a half, the older ones are my sister Katya and brother Petya. Only three of them survived the blockade. Dusya was saved because she was evacuated with other children from the nursery to the city of Achinsk in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. She returned in 1944. In June 1941, Petya received his high school diploma. The military enlistment office sent him to work at the Kirov Plant, where shells for the front were manufactured. Then grandfather took the guy to the railway, where he worked himself. At night, they went to remove so-called incendiary bombs from the roofs of houses. When the Nazis bombed the Badaev warehouses, people flocked there hoping to get at least some food. Petya collected sugar mixed with sand and ate it… Soon he was gone. Grandmother hid the fact that Petya had died while it was cold so that she could receive his bread ration for the family. Grandfather died from a shell explosion. Both of them were cremated at a brick factory closer to spring. Grandmother and Katya completed nursing courses and provided assistance to the wounded. In 1947, fleeing from hunger, they moved to the village of Ferma, Shumilinsky District, to a relative. Then the sisters moved to Vitebsk, worked in construction, and lived in a barrack. They got married there, and I was born there.

Tatyana Khramtsova cannot talk about her childhood without emotion. Although she was alone in the family, they lived hard. The most delicious food for her was "tyupki" — sweet water with crumbled bun or bread. She remembers how in winter the barrack was covered with snow up to the small window. So that she wouldn't freeze, her mother and grandmother placed the little girl in a warm spot on the stove ledge. Childhood memories warm her to this day, and her soul fills with bitterness — her loved ones are no longer in this world.

All the years after her mother's death, Tatyana Alexandrovna has carefully kept the awards, documents, congratulatory addresses from the President of the Republic of Belarus, and memories associated with her family as the most precious things. Now they will take their place in the exhibition dedicated to the blockade survivors.

Blockade survivors living in the Vitebsk region, their children, grandchildren, relatives, and simply indifferent people! You can contribute to the creation of a memorial exhibition about the residents of the unconquered city. You are expected at: Vitebsk, Komunisticheskaya St., 27/1. Contact persons and phone numbers for inquiries: Chairman of the Vitebsk City Organization "Bratstvo" Valery Gennadievich Ananchenko (+375 212 53-84-24), Tatyana Alexandrovna Khramtsova (+375 33 345-66-77).

Nadezhda Fondarenko, "Vitebskiye Vesti"