Sergeyenko: Belarus to systematise all memorable places during Year of Historical Memory
Employees of the Belarus’ President Administration were working on the site of the Litavets Memorial Complex in the Dzerzhinsk District on the day of the nationwide subbotnik. First of all, civil servants laid flowers at the memorial and honoured the memory of the dead with a minute of silence. Then they planted an alley of 200 fir trees, put the surrounding area into order, and tinted the monuments.
“A lot of different events will be held in the country in the Year of Historical Memory. One of the directions is the systematisation of all memorable places, such as the village of Litavets, as well as burial places and battlefields,” Igor Sergeyenko, Head of the Belarus’ President Administration, told reporters.
According to him, the memorial sites of the Great Patriotic War period in Belarus have been maintained in good condition for many years, “Meanwhile, perpetuating the memory, we must remember those people who shed blood and died for our country, we must bring young people here and tell them more about those pages of history, like the guide told us today [Director of the Dzerzhinsk Regional Museum of Local History Galina Vashkevich] about those tragic days. Twenty-nine villages of the Dzerzhinsk District were destroyed during the war. In 1943, as a result of a punitive operation in the village of Litavets, 196 people were killed, including 58 children, 42 houses were burnt down… All this happened on January 14th, 1943. There are hundreds of such villages on the territory of Belarus.”
Igor Sergeyenko called subbotnik days in our country a good tradition that must be continued, “Spring, the approach of summer – to a certain degree this always means renewal, purification of nature, rebirth. We need to help these processes.”
