President Administration employees landscaping Litavets Memorial Complex as part of subbotnik
Employees of Belarus’ President Administration are working at the Litavets Memorial Complex in the Dzerzhinsk District today. Before planting dozens of young birch trees and landscaping the territory, the civil servants laid wreaths at the memorial and honoured the memory of the victims with a minute of silence.
In his talk with journalists, the Deputy Head of the President Administration, Aleksandr Yegorov, stressed that the nationwide subbotnik is a very important tradition for Belarus, “Such joint work enables people not only to meet again for creative work, but also to understand even better that we are Belarusians, that we are united. On the other hand, working in such places make us recall the events of our history, which we went through with pain, but managed to stand our ground and remain a nation, Belarusians. It is very important to remember this.”
Mr. Yegorov added, “Being anywhere in the country, we can meet people whose relatives died defending our country. We must remember this, and then Belarusians will exist as a nation.”
As noted by the Deputy Head of the President Administration, such creative work and preservation of historical memory are part of the national code of Belarusians. “We remember our ancestors who died, and we are ready to show that we are a united nation. The President Administration has been coming here for several years so that this place would be a comfortable attraction for everyone, so that people visit it and remember the terrible events of the past – so that such a tragedy would never repeat,” he said.
The Litavets Memorial Complex is a former village on the territory of the Dobrinevo Village Council in the Dzerzhinsk District of the Minsk Region. It was destroyed along with its residents by the Nazi occupiers and their accomplices during the Jacob punitive operation. On January 14th, 1943, fascists and policemen shot people, children, and babies in cradles, and then set fire to their homes. A total of 196 people were killed. The fascists did not destroy the school and several houses only, but that was done by policemen who came a week later.
A memorial was erected on a voluntary basis in 1986, and Komsomol members and youth of the Dzerzhinsk Experimental Mechanical Plant, the Negorelsk Educational and Experimental Forestry, the Marat Kazei farm, the Reinforced Concrete Bridge Plant made a great contribution to perpetuating the memory of the atrocities of the Nazis. The memorial was unveiled on July 5th, 1987. A bas-relief was created in the central part of the former village, an entrance sign was placed in a forest clearing, and beams raised above the ground were next to it. They symbolise the remains of the village burned down by the Nazis. One of the beams has the inscription of the village name, and the other – of a text telling about the tragedy. A ‘street’ has been laid leading to the central bas-relief, which depicts the peaceful life of the villagers interrupted by ‘European civilisers’.
