Posted: 20.06.2024 10:17:00

Belarus Segodnya Publishing House presented Partisans of Belarus project in Rossiyskaya Gazeta

A reception dedicated to Belarus’ liberation from Nazi invaders took place on June 18th in Moscow, and Dmitry Zhuk, the Director and Editor-in-Chief of the Belarus Segodnya Publishing House, a member of the Council of the Republic, presented the largest Belarusian digital project as part of the Partisan Dugout initiative in Rossiyskaya Gazeta

That was the second presentation of the Partisans of Belarus project to the Moscow audience. Although the first exhibition opened in Moscow, it took place on the Belarusian territory: at the country’s embassy. Meanwhile, the second one was shown exclusively to Russians: the largest multimedia holding – Rossiyskaya Gazeta, which is a partner of the Belarus Segodnya Publishing House – hosted the presentation. In turn, the joint Brothers of Victory. Partisan Dugout on Pravda Street initiative acted as the stage for the Belarusian project.

A multimedia portal aroused the greatest interest among the exhibition guests. It makes it possible to search for participants of the partisan movement in the territory of the BSSR. The family of the famous partisan and writer, Eduard Nordman, were among the first to try how it works.

“I learnt of this portal and found my grandfather right away, it was enough to enter his last name in the search bar,” a grandson of the partisan shared his impressions. “Huge volumes of information have been collected there, and some of the documents are not even included into our family archive. Therefore, I will visit the portal again from home and download all these documents as a keepsake.”

“Exhibitions of the kind need to be organised – for the youth to know the truth, since history cannot be rewritten. Therefore, the more such events are held, the better it will be for all of us, for our past, for our present, and for the future of our grandchildren,” Eduard Nordman's daughter, Svetlana, noted.

For Belarus, the partisan movement is a concept of the people’s essence. It is not just the Belarusian history: as noted by Dmitry Zhuk during the presentation, people from all over the Soviet Union fought in the territory of the republic. According to him, Belarusians were not alone during the war, and that was worth a lot. With this in view, the seemingly exclusively Belarusian project is of a global scale, since the heroes and their descendants live now in dozens of countries, which are also eager to know the truth about those times.

“This project is important for us primarily because it emotionally attracts young people, for whom it is simple and habitual to visit an online resource, find information about their ancestors, and perhaps brag about it to classmates who will then also visit partizany.by. By now, the site has been visited by more than one and a half million people. It will take up to a dozen years to digitise all data of the partisan movement participants, but we will definitely complete this work. We actually must – and we have no other way – to preserve the memory of that war. After all, as soon as we started to forget about it, they started killing us – as they did back in the early 1940s. If we do not pass this memory on to our children and grandchildren, I consider that we will betray the memory of our parents and grandfathers," the Director of the Belarus Segodnya Publishing House stated.

The history of the partisan movement has an important and even sacred meaning for the republic, and – as noted by Belarus’ Ambassador to Russia Dmitry Krutoi – the phenomenon of partisan struggle and activities of Belarusian underground workers seems to be not fully disclosed yet.

“Immediately after the war, especially in the 1990s, there was, unfortunately, an opinion that front pages of newspapers should not be devoted to the partisan feat, and so on. Thank God, history has put everything in its place. There are millions of archival documents on this topic, they have simply not been processed yet. According to German data, there were 130 thousand active partisans at the time of the beginning of Operation Bagration, but our data indicates that there were about 180 thousand of them. In addition, based on their data, there were 90-95 thousand partisans in France (which population made 40 million) at the time of the Normandy landings, while the figure was 11-15 times more in the BSSR where 6 million lived: 370 thousand. In February 1943, Hitler even issued a separate order to equate the war with partisans with combat operations on the fronts. After that, the Khatyn tragedy happened, and partisans responded with a rail war and other well-known events. After Operation Bagration, 180 thousand of them went on to liberate Europe. Therefore, this is an absolute phenomenon for our country,” the diplomat said.

At the moment, the Partisans of Belarus project keeps information of 220,000+ participants in the movement, and more than one and a half million documents have been digitised already. Dmitry Mezentsev, the State Secretary of the Union State, believes this work aimed at perpetuation of memory means a lot for Belarusians and Russians.

“It arouses painful feelings,” Mr. Mezentsev said after visiting the Partisans of Belarus exhibition. “If we just think of what these people went through, if we imagine how many events and emotions, how much pain, fear, will and courage these black-and-white photos feature… We will definitely tell you about it again, when presenting our Operation Bagration. Partisans of the Belarusian Land in the Brest fortress on June 22nd. This many-page book – prepared by archivists, publishers, artists, and journalists – is devoted to the feat and to the truth that this feat must never be forgotten.”