On the transfer of archive documents testifying to the extermination of the civilian population in the Rechitsa district during the Great Patriotic War

The General Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Belarus is investigating a criminal case on the fact of the genocide of the Belarusian population during the Great Patriotic War and the postwar period.

The staff of the State Archives have been working closely with the Prosecutor’s Office of Gomel Region since 2021. At present, the Prosecutor’s Office and the State Archives are sharing the archive documents which testify to the extermination of the civilian population in the town of Rechitsa and Rechitsa district, Gomel Region.

During the years of the Occupation, the Nazis and their accomplices burned down 68 villages on the territory of the Rechitsa district.

As a result of the joint work, four large-scale maps of 1938 of the town of Rechitsa and Rechitsa district were found in the pre-war collections, which were evacuated inland during the Great Patriotic War and preserved to the present day.

These finds were digitized by the Republican Technical Laboratory for Security Records Microfilming in Gomel and transferred to the exposition of the Rechitsa Local History Museum.

Representatives of the Rechitsa District Executive Committee, the Prosecutor’s Office and the State Archives laid flowers at the burial sites of war victims in Ozershchina, Rechitsa district, Gomel region.