Exhibition dedicated to the opening of the international scholarly conference Khatyn 1943–2013
On 20 March 2013 a mobile exhibition was opened at the Minsk-based Johannes Rau International Center for Education and Exchange dedicated to the opening of the international scholarly conference Khatyn 1943 – 2013. Events. People. Memory.
The organizers of the exhibition are the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Justice Ministry of the Republic of Belarus, the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus, the Khatyn State Memorial Complex, the Belarusian State Archives of Films, Photographs and Sound Recordings in Dzerzhinsk and the Zonal State Archives in Borisov.
The exhibition is created in two versions: a stationary exposition of the original records exhibited at the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus and a mobile exposition of the digital copies of the documents and photographs placed on eight stands at the Johannes Rau International Educational Center in Minsk.
The bulk of the exhibition are the records from the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus that detail the crimes committed by the Nazi occupants and their accomplices against the civilian population in the village of Khatyn. These are the documents created by the Partisans and the local people, the German inquests and reports concerning the events of that day, the Partisan press, the certificates and lists of the victims, documents submitted by the eye-witnesses of the Khatyn tragedy and by the war criminals who were punished after the war.
Khatyn was not the only village destroyed by the Nazis in 1941-1944. In all, 628 villages in Belarus shared the fate of Khatyn. The reports and lists of the victims displayed at the exhibition bear testimony to the punitive operations carried out by the Nazis and the burning by them of other Belarusian villages.
The Khatyn Memorial Complex is one of the sites in Belarus most visited by the Belarusian citizens as well as the foreign guests and tourists from different countries.