In Vitebsk, the memory of the victims of fascist concentration camps was honored

A requiem rally traditionally took place at the site of the former death camp "5th Regiment" on Titova Street. A monument and a chapel with a bell have been erected here in memory of the deceased prisoners. Wreaths and flowers were laid at the monument. The event was attended by former fascist prisoners, the leadership of the region and the city, representatives of labor collectives and public organizations, students and schoolchildren. The memory of the fallen was honored with a minute of silence.

Talking to journalists before the commemorative event, Fyodor Tikhonov, chairman of the regional organization of the public association "Belarusian Association of Former Minor Prisoners of Fascism," noted that there were more than 70 concentration camps in the Vitebsk region during the war. "According to various data, from 80,000 to 100,000 prisoners of war and civilians died in this place alone, which is sacred to all Vitebsk residents. We are coming forward with an initiative to create a memorial here. Its principle is simple - we propose to lay slabs (one from each district) on which all the locations of forced detention camps and the number of victims in the Vitebsk region will be written," said Fyodor Tikhonov.

As for the funds for the implementation of the idea, he suggests collecting money for the memorial during subbotniks (volunteer workdays), and appealing to entrepreneurs and the leadership of the region's districts. "Here, on the outskirts of Vitebsk, there were the second largest concentration camps in Belarus in terms of the number of deaths after Trostyanets," emphasized Fyodor Tikhonov.

Sofia Alexandrovna Shlykova, a former prisoner of the Vitebsk concentration camp, has very few memories of those terrible times - she was only three years old. She knows everything that happened during the war from her mother's stories. In the family

the former prisoner had 5 children, the father went to the front, the elder brother - to the partisans. All those remaining with their mother were taken to the "5th regiment" in the autumn of 1942. "There were mainly prisoners of war there then, they were not given anything to eat or drink. And in 1943, they began to actively bring in the civilian population. They were very cold, got typhus, many died. My mother's brother's wife died here with a baby. The bodies were thrown into pits," said Sofia Shlykova.

The concentration camp of the 313th Security Division was located on the western outskirts of Vitebsk, where the 5th railway regiment was located before the war. There were two concentration camps on its territory: for prisoners of war, operating since the beginning of the occupation of Vitebsk, and for the civilian population. Later, the camp became general. There are 4,547 former prisoners living in the Vitebsk region, and 2,047 such people in Vitebsk. The International Day of Liberation of Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps was established on the initiative of the United Nations in memory of the international uprising, which was raised on April 11, 1945, by the prisoners of Buchenwald, upon learning of the approach of the Soviet army.

Alena Tikhonova - BELTA. Photo by "Vitebskiye Vesti".