On the eve of the International Day of Liberation of Prisoners of Fascist Concentration Camps, a memorial event was held in the Kopyl District Museum of Local History.
The meeting was attended by the prosecutor of the Kopyl district Vitaly Afanasenko, deputy chairperson of the district executive committee Irina Yukho, chief specialist of the department of ideological work, culture and youth affairs Elena Karpelenya, chairperson of the Kopyl district Council of veterans Lyudmila Kamenko, as well as students of secondary school No. 3.
The guest of honor at the meeting was a resident of Kopyl, former prisoner Nadezhda Ivanovna Kotvitskaya, who told about her childhood, which coincided with the years of wartime hardships. In 1943, she, her mother, brother and three sisters were taken to Germany, where they were used as labor. What Nadezhda Ivanovna and her family had to endure will be published in the next issue of the newspaper.
Unfortunately, the guest’s story is far from isolated. According to Andrey Letchenya, a researcher at the Kopyl District Museum of Local History, a total of 749 people were taken from the Kopyl District to Germany for forced labor. 258 people became prisoners of fascist concentration camps, 114 of whom were minors. In addition, during the war, the Nazi invaders and their accomplices killed 6,976 civilians from the Kopyl region, burned 30 villages and destroyed 24, and created three ghettos: in Kopyl, Timkovichi, and Grozovo.
In general, the leitmotif of the meeting was the assertion that peace on earth is unthinkable without historical memory. Only by remembering the terrible events that previous generations had to endure, paying tribute to those who died and survived in that hell, can one hope that something like this will never happen again. This is what those present talked about.
At the end of the event, its participants laid flowers at the monument to the residents of Kopyl who died during the Nazi occupation and honored the memory of the victims of fascism with a minute of silence.
The young participants of the meeting shared their impressions.
Ksenia Brodskaya, 9th grade student at Secondary School No. 3:
— I liked the event. It was interesting to listen to Nadezhda Ivanovna, a war witness. I generally like such stories from the lives of people who have had to endure a lot. And here I was lucky to hear everything first-hand. It was goosebumps.
Pavel Sergeev, 8th grade student of Secondary School No. 3:
— The meeting made me think about the value of what we have. I couldn’t help but compare our life with what people had to endure during the war. I was very touched by the stories of the former prisoner. Overall, it was very educational. I discovered a lot of new things.
COMPETENTLY
Prosecutor of the Kopyl district Vitaly Afanasenko:
— The Great Patriotic War ended almost 80 years ago. However, during this time, the monstrous crimes of the Nazi invaders have not disappeared from the memory of mankind. It is impossible to remember the atrocities of the fascists without pain. And we remember what they did to our compatriots. That is why Belarus is conducting a meticulous full-scale investigation into the case of the genocide of the Belarusian people during the Great Patriotic War, the goal of which is not only to establish the scale of the tragedy, but also to show the true face of Nazism and fascism. We are obliged to protect the truth about the events of those terrible years, because ignoring the lessons of the past can lead to a repetition of the tragedy.
Written by belta.by
