Mobile documentary exhibition “Khatyn – Sanctuary of National Memory”

In the Year of Historical Memory it is impossible to avoid the date of 22 March 2022, the 79th anniversary of the Khatyn tragedy. Exactly 79 years ago, the Nazis and their accomplices destroyed the peaceful village of Khatyn and burned its residents alive. On that terrible day, 149 people died in the fire, 74 of them adults and 75 children, the youngest child was only 7 weeks old.

The National Archives of the Republic of Belarus holds a large number of documents detailing the crimes committed by the Nazi invaders and their collaborators against the civilian population of the village of Khatyn. These documents are held in the archival fonds – “Belarusian Republican Commission for Assistance to the Extraordinary State Commission on Nazi Crimes and Damage in the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic”, “Belarusian Headquarters of the Partisan Movement”, “Collection of Translations of Documents from the Great Patriotic War. 1941-1945”, “Institute of Historical and Political Research under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus”, “Collection of digital copies as original documents of the Extraordinary State Commission for the Establishment and Investigation of the Nazi Crimes and Damage in the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic, transferred from the State Archives of the Russian Federation”. These are the documents of the partisan brigade “People’s Avengers” about the Khatyn operation, lists of the wounded and killed during the battle, German orders and reports on the events of that day, acts of the Extraordinary State Commission on the burning of the village and its inhabitants. Of particular interest are the testimonies of the surviving witnesses to the Khatyn tragedy and the war criminals who suffered deserved punishment in the post-war period. All these documents form the basis of the travelling exhibition ‘Khatyn – Sanctuary of National Memory’.