On the holding of a Memory lesson dedicated to the tragedy of the village of Khatyn by the employees of the institution «Zonal State Archive in Orsha»

On March 21, 2025, on the eve of the 82nd anniversary of the tragedy of the village of Khatyn, as well as within the framework of the «Archives to School» campaign, in the state educational institution «Secondary School No.23 of Orsha» with 6th grade students, the leading archivist of the department for the use of documents of the State Archive in Orsha Yulia Gryadovka held an information hour «Memory and pain of the Belarusian land. Khatyn».

Today we remember the March day of 1943, which united all the residents of the village of Khatyn in the Minsk region with a common terrible fate. The tragedy of Khatyn is one of thousands of facts testifying to the deliberate policy of genocide against the population of Belarus, which was carried out by the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. The Nazis spared neither women, nor children, nor the elderly. 149 people were burned alive in the fire, including 75 children.

The bells of Khatyn remind us of the tragic fate of hundreds of Belarusian villages. The Khatyn alarm is a memory and a warning.

During the event, the children familiarized themselves with archival documents and photographs reflecting the Nazi policy towards the civilian population, learned about the events that took place in the village of Khatyn, the fate of its residents, as well as about the memorial complex and museum created at the site of the tragedy.

In addition, the students were shown films about the village of Khatyn, as well as about the village of Ola, where 1,758 people were killed at dawn on January 14, 1944, including 950 children. Almost nothing was written about this settlement in books, no documentaries were made about it, and eyewitnesses of these distant events are no longer alive…

In the photo: Conducting an information hour