“Only memory remains” (on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the destruction of the Minsk ghetto, the BGAMLI team visited the workshop of one of the creators of “Khatyn” – L.M. Levin)

“There is only one thing in the world that could be worse than Auschwitz – that the world will forget that there was such a place” (Henry Appel).

The destruction of the Minsk ghetto (almost 100,000 inhabitants out of 250,000 of the total number of citizens) occurred gradually – from 1941 until the last pogrom on October 21–23, 1943. Among the dead are those whose documents are stored in the Belarusian State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art: sculptor and artist Abram Brother, violinists and teachers Yehuda Zhukhavitsky and German Solomonov, actor and director Mikhail Zorev and others.

On the 80th anniversary of the tragedy, the team of BGAMLI visited the creative workshop of the Honored Architect of Belarus, laureate of the Lenin Prize and the Lenin Komsomol Prize, twice laureate of the State Prize of the Republic of Belarus, academician of the Belarusian and International Academies of Architecture, head of the Union of Belarusian Jewish Public Associations and communities, one of the creators of the memorial complexes “Khatyn” and “Yama” – Leonid Mendelevich Levin. His daughter, architect Galina Leonidovna Levina, gave a detailed tour of her father’s creative workshop and presented BHAMLI with the book “Khatyn: an autobiographical story.”

After visiting the workshop of L.M. Levin, it becomes clear: we only have the memory of the dead. But, thanks to her, the people exterminated in the Minsk ghetto continue to exist and remain close to us.