80 years of the Khatyn tragedy
These days, one of the most tragic events of the Great Patriotic War is remembered – the destruction along with the inhabitants of the Belarusian village of Khatyn. On March 22, 1943, 149 residents of Khatyn were burned alive or shot for possible assistance to partisans.
The tragedy of Khatyn is reflected in many works of art, but one of the first most often mentioned is the book “Я з вогненнай вёскі…” by Belarusian writers Ales Adamovich, Yanka Bryl and Vladimir Kolesnik about hundreds of tragedies of Belarusian villages burned by the Nazis along with their inhabitants. This book is an example of a special genre of literature that can be called differently: a collection of memoirs and diaries, a documentary tragedy, a report from the scene, a memory book, a document book. This book was created with the idea of telling humanity about the great, unheard-of tragedy of the people during the Great Patriotic War through the stories of its direct participants – residents of villages and cities.
For the first time, pages from the future book “Я з вогненнай вёскі…” were published in the magazine “Young” in 1971 under the title “Memory”. A. Adamovich, J. Bryl and V. Kolesnik wrote: “Sing these galas to be with us, with our peoples and with the united people, let them not only remind you of the past, but also cry to be drunk.” Work on the book lasted about 5 years. For 1970-1973 the authors traveled around 35 regions of Belarus, visited 147 “fire villages”. The stories of more than 300 living witnesses of the tragedies of Belarusian villages and cities were recorded on magnetic tape. The book was published in 1975 by the Mastatskaya Litaratura publishing house (translated into 6 languages). A large number of photographs in the book were supplemented by two gramophone records with recordings of the voices of those who spoke about the tragedy.
The website of the Belarusian State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art contains documents that reflect the process of collecting material and preparing the book “Я з вогненнай вёскі…”.
