Ceremonial events dedicated to the centenary of the end of the First World War took place at the Memorial Church of All Saints in Minsk

On 11 November 2018 the Memorial Church in Honor of All Saints in Minsk held ceremonial events dedicated to the centenary of the end of the First World War. In the church crypt the participants laid the capsule with the soil brought from the WWI battlefield at Smorgon. The heroic defense of Smorgon in WWI has become a symbol of this war in Belarus. The white hall of the church hosted the opening of the thematic exhibition and a presentation of the book “Obelisks in memory of the Russian imperial army in the First World War” (authors E. Khoroshevich, A. Sharkov).

Director of the National Archives of Belarus A. Demyanyuk and Director of the National Historical Archives of Belarus D. Yatsevich attended the ceremonial events. As a gift to the church museum they handed over to Senior Priest Fyodor Povny, Superior of the All-Saints Parish, a selection of digital copies of documents from the archive holdings, and three books of published documents “The burned villages of Belarus. 1941-1944”, “The burned villages of Russia. 1941-1944” and “Belarus in the First World War. 1914-1918”.