Director of the Zonal State Archive in Bobruisk visited the memorial complex «Children – Victims of War»

Director of the Zonal State Archive in Bobruisk Elena Zayats paid tribute to the victims of fascism at the memorial in Krasny Bereg. One of the largest children’s donor concentration camps was located in the village of Krasny Bereg, where children aged eight to fourteen were kept.

The memorial complex consists of two parts. In the foreground is a bronze figure of a teenage girl. With her thin arms raised above her head, she seems to be defending herself from all the horrors of war. Her face shows pain, defenselessness and helplessness. The sculpture is characterized by a unique, dynamic plasticity, its broken silhouette conveys internal tension. Behind the girl is an empty classroom. Even rows of white desks (three rows of five desks), a blackboard with a full reproduction of a letter to Katya Susanina’s father, which became the prototype for the girl’s sculpture. The second part of the composition is called «Sun Square». The central image is the white sail of a paper boat, on which the names of children are reproduced. The sailboat is surrounded by children’s drawings, depicted as stained glass windows in white frames. The stained glass windows are based on real children’s drawings made after the war in Sergei Katkov’s children’s art studio. They were provided and processed by his daughter, artist Svetlana Katkova. The white frames also contain figures, enlarged to almost monumental sizes, molded from plasticine by children from the Krasnoberezhsky orphanage. Sculptor M. Petrul transformed the plasticine figures into monumental works. The memorial is divided by rays-alleys laid out with multi-colored tiles. Each detail of the complex is allegorical and symbolic. Desks, stained glass windows for drawings are made of white concrete. The complex is located in the middle of a huge apple orchard, with young trees planted around it (Information from the website «Monuments of the Gomel Region»).

1-2 Director of the institution «Zonal State Archive in Bobruisk» Elena Zayats

3-7 Memorial complex «Children – victims of war»