The State Archives of Vitebsk Region took part in the events dedicated to the National Remembrance Day of the Victims of the Great Patriotic War and the Genocide of the Belarusian People
On 22 June 2022, employees of the State Archives of Vitebsk Region took part in the events dedicated to the National Remembrance Day of the Victims of the Great Patriotic War and the Genocide of the Belarusian People.
The most tragic event of the last century was the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). The city of Vitebsk had fully suffered the hardships of the war years. Out of nearly 180 thousand civilians, who lived in the town on the eve of the war, only 118 people had met their liberators.
The events commemorating the fallen liberators and victims of the genocide took place in places of significance for all Vitebsk citizens: the Memorial Cemetery «5th Regiment» and the War Memorial on Sovetskaya Street (on Uspenskaya Hill).
The «5th Regiment» Memorial Cemetery is located on the grounds of the former camp for Soviet prisoners of war (coded as KL-313-SD). In 1942, the civilians from Vitebsk and its surroundings began o fall into the camp. According to official data, in 1941-1944 over 150 thousand people passed through the camp. About 80,000 people died there.
16 officers, including two major generals, three Heroes of the Soviet Union and the most famous partisan commander and honorary citizen of Vitebsk Minay Shmyrev sleep eternally at the Military Memorial on Uspenskaya Hill in 11 individual graves and in one mass grave.
Eternal memory to the liberators and to all those who died in the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945).
