On the eve of Victory Day, the Vitebsk Region Media Center hosted a roundtable discussion titled «Keepers of Memory: The Role of Belarusian Women in Preserving the Truth about the Great Patriotic War»
During the roundtable, students from law classes at Vitebsk Secondary School No.34 and students from the Faculty of Humanities and Communications at P.M.Masherov Vitebsk State University learned from experts whose lives and work are connected to the preservation of historical memory, a wealth of interesting information about women whose lives exemplify incredible courage and fearlessness.
One of the speakers at the event was Elena Bondareva, Head of the Department of Information Retrieval Systems and Automated Archival Technologies at the State Archives of the Vitebsk Region. She spoke about the heroism of Hero of the Soviet Union Zinaida Tusnolobova-Marchenko, who was severely wounded at the age of 23 and lost her arms and legs. In her memoirs, sent to the archive in 1977, Zinaida Mikhailovna recounted how she learned to live again and how she persevered: she learned to walk with prosthetics, got married, had children, and led an active life as a social activist.
Young people listened with particular interest to Larisa Brueva, a local historian, a member of the Vitebsk Regional Council of Veterans’ Commission for the Perpetuation of the Memory of Defenders of the Fatherland and Victims of War, and a member of the Coordinating Council of the International Association of Public Search Organizations «People’s Memory of the Defenders of the Fatherland». Documents from Brueva’s personal archive are stored in the State Archives of the Vitebsk Region. Stories of how wreckage of Soviet aircraft shot down during the war is recovered from lakes and the remains of fallen soldiers are discovered during memorial vigils, thus bringing their names back from oblivion to their families, left no one indifferent.
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| 1. Roundtable Experts |
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| 2. Roundtable Participants |
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| 3. Elena Bondareva Presenting |
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| 4. Presentation on Zinaida Tusnolobova-Marchenko |
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| 5. Larisa Brueva Presenting |