The international scholarly conference “Archives and War” dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Victory over Nazism was held on November 4, 2020
On November 4, 2020, the International Scholarly Conference “Archives and War” (dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Victory over Nazism) was held online. The event was organized by the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus and the Faculty of History of the Belarusian State University.
The conference was attended by specialists from Belarus, Russia, Poland, France, students.
The agenda of the conference covered the issues of ensuring the preservation of documentary heritage in the war periods, specifying the losses incurred by the Belarusian archives during the Great Patriotic War, identifying and recording the complexes of documentary materials exported from Belarus in the war years. An important thematic area, covered in a number of reports, was the analysis of the activities to preserve and organize the use of archival documents on the history of Belarus in the period 1941-1945.
A round table “The profession of an archivist: modern challenges” was organized as part of the conference, dedicated to the problem of raising the qualification of employees in the archival service and issues of vocational guidance for young people.
The director of the Department for Archives and Records Management of Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus V.I. Kourash addressed the conference participants with a welcome speech. He emphasized that the efficient and responsible work of Belarusian archivists during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war years made it possible to form a unique complex of the most valuable written documents, films, photographs and sound recordings. Today, the state archives of Belarus preserve more than 100,000 files on paper and audiovisual media relating to the period of the Great Patriotic War.
More than 20 employees of the state archival institutions took part in the conference.