Exhibition «The Path of Mercy»

Published: May 10, 2024

On May 7, 2024, the opening of the joint exhibition «The Path of Mercy» took place at the National Library of Belarus. The exhibition is dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the Dapamoga medical and social service and the activities of the Belarusian Red Cross in general.

The exhibition «The Path of Mercy» talks about the activities of the medical and social service of the Red Cross «Dapamog» and the role of the Belarusian Red Cross both in assisting the healthcare system in preserving and strengthening the health of the nation, and in popularizing the ideas of mercy and humanity in modern times.

The exhibition presents archival materials from the funds of the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus, the Belarusian Red Cross, and the Museum of the History of Medicine of Belarus. Posters, newspapers, and posters from the 1960s to 1980s of the twentieth century are on display, with the help of which mass propaganda work was carried out among the population, popularization of a healthy lifestyle, caring for oneself and loved ones, and donation. Honorary and award badges, certificates, photo albums and other materials telling about the history of the creation and development of the Belarusian Red Cross are on display.
At the exhibition, the National Archives presented unique documents:
– a telegram to the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the BSSR A.G.Chervyakov about taking urgent measures to create the Belarusian Red Cross Society in 1921;
– information message about the Minsk Soviet School of Sisters of Mercy;
– estimate for the maintenance of the school of nurses for 1922;
– schedule of lectures for nurses’ courses;
– order of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR on measures to eliminate the typhus epidemic in the regions of the Byelorussian SSR liberated from occupation in 1944.

Throughout all stages of the formation and development of the Belarusian Red Cross, important areas of activity were the provision of medical and social assistance to those in need, participation in anti-epidemic and preventive activities. The first nurses of the Red Cross began working in Belarus in the second half of the 19th century. They helped in hospitals, cared for the seriously ill, worked in hotbeds of infection, in the communities of nurses of local departments of the Russian Red Cross Society in Minsk, Vitebsk, Grodno and Mogilev.

In 1941, the structure of the Belarusian Red Cross was destroyed, but Red Cross activists continued to provide medical care in partisan detachments and underground, in hospitals and medical institutions. Since 1943, the restoration of the organizational structure of the Red Cross in the liberated territory began.

In the post-war period, the Belarusian Red Cross Society became a reliable assistant to health authorities in carrying out large-scale sanitary and preventive measures among the population. The main tasks solved by the organization during this period were helping orphans, helping disabled war veterans, carrying out sanitary education and sanitary defense work, preparing sanitary assets, and organizing donations.

In 1964, the Belarusian Red Cross formed the Mercy Service to provide home-based patronage and care for veterans and disabled people of the Great Patriotic War, which soon expanded the categories of wards to single and elderly people living alone and disabled people. In 2018, the service received a new name – the medical and social service of the Red Cross «Dapamog». This year the service turns 60 years old.