Photo-documentary exhibition «Khatyn – a shrine of national memory»
On March 21, 2023, the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus opened a documentary exhibition «Khatyn – a shrine of national memory», prepared by the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus, the Belarusian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents and the State Archive of the Minsk Region, timed to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the tragedy of the Belarusian village of Khatyn, burned along with the inhabitants fascist occupiers on March 22, 1943.
The exposition is based on unique original documents of the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus: report of the General Commissioner in Minsk on the destruction of the village of Khatyn dated April 1, 1943, an act drawn up by residents of the village of Selishche of the Kamensky village council of the Pleshchenitsky district of the Minsk region on the burning of the village of Khatyn with its population dated March 25 1943, act of the commission of the Pleschenitsky underground district committee of the CP(b)B, the partisan detachment named after M.I.Kalinin and residents of the village of Selishche on the atrocities of the German punitive expedition in the village of Khatyn dated July 12, 1943. The report of the commander aroused great interest among visitors to the exhibition 118 – police security battalion to the head of the SS and police of the Borisov district about the partisan attack on the battalion near the village of Guba and the destruction of the village of Khatyn dated April 12, 1943 (original in German and its translation), as well as the administrative map of the Minsk region for 1940 on which the settlement of Khatyn and other evidence of crimes against peaceful villages.
The banner exhibition «Khatyn – a shrine of national memory» is based on digital copies of archive documents that reveal in detail the crimes of the Nazi invaders and their accomplices against the civilian population of the village of Khatyn and other destroyed villages whose inhabitants died during the war. These are documents of partisans and local residents, German interrogations and reports on the events of that day, partisan press, materials of witnesses to the Khatyn tragedy, as well as war criminals who suffered a well-deserved punishment in the post-war period.
The head of the department of the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus M.A.Starostenko introduced the exhibition, the leading researcher V.D.Selemenev gave a lecture on the Khatyn tragedy for the employees of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus and the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus.
