Virtual exhibition «Khatyn. We remember and will not forget…»

In the forest wilderness, under the blue sky,
Above the ashes of the former village
The bells of Khatyn ring –
Sad bells…

The memorial complex «Khatyn» is a shrine of the national memory of Belarusians. It perpetuates the memory of the residents of Khatyn, civilians of thousands of burned Belarusian villages and the civilian population exterminated by the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. On March 22, 1943, the Nazis burned the village of Khatyn and 149 of its residents, including 75 children. In order to memorialize the tragedy of the Belarusian people, in January 1966 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus decided to create the memorial complex «Khatyn», which was opened on July 5, 1969.

The virtual exhibition «Khatyn. We remember and will not forget…», prepared by the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus, tells about the history of the boundless cruelty of the Nazis and about the village that became a symbol of the terrible tragedy of the Belarusian people during the Great Patriotic War.

The exhibition is based on archive documents that reveal the crimes of the Nazi occupiers and their accomplices against the civilian population, as well as photographs from the Belarusian State Archive of Film, Photo, and Sound Documents.

Another village has disappeared from the geographical map of Belarus – the first in a row! But the word Khatyn has carried the anger, pain, and sorrow of all the burned Belarusian villages, the ashes of thousands of exterminated people, into the centuries.

Belarus remembers everyone…

You can see the virtual exhibition at the link.