A book “Khatyn. Tragedy and Memory: Documents and Materials” has been published
A book entitled “Khatyn. Tragedy and Memory: Documents and Materials” has been recently published in Belarus. The compilers are V.I. Adamushko, director at the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Republic of Belarus, I.A. Valakhanovich, department chief at the Central Archives of the State Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus, N.V. Kirillova, director at the Khatyn State Memorial Complex in the years 1998-2007, V.D. Selemenev, director at the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus (NARB), V.V. Skalaban, chief of the publications department at the NARB, and N.E. Kalesnik, chief archivist at the publications department at the NARB.
The book presents all the documents so far identified relating to the destruction of the Belarusian village of Khatyn by the Nazis on 22 March 1943, and those describing the establishment of the memorial complex on the site of the tragedy, which marks fourty years on 5 July 2009. In all, the book includes 150 documents selected from the National Archives of Republic of Belarus, the Central Archives of the State Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus, the Belarusian State Archives of Scientific and Technical Documentation, the State Archives of Minsk Region, the Zonal State Archives in Borisov, the Archives of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Belarus, the personal collection of L.M. Levin, the Collection of Resolutions of the USSR Government, as well as documents published by the underground party press and in the postwar periodical editions. Most of the documents are introduced to scholars for the first time.
The book is illustrated with photographs selected from the Khatyn State Memorial Complex, the Belarusian State Archives of Films, Photographs and Sound Recordings, the Central Archives of the State Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus, and from the collections of personal papers relating to E.V. Gil, T.A. Izokh, L.M. Levin, and a witness to the Khatyn tragedy, A.P. Zhelobkovich.
The supplement contains fragments from the L.M. Levin ’ s diary kept from 5 January to 30 June 1969, narrating the last months of his work on the memorial.