On the Day of National Remembrance of the victims of the Great Patriotic War and the genocide of the Belarusian people in Belarus, we remember those who, at the cost of their lives, won peace and freedom for us.

The leadership of the country, ministries and departments, representatives of labor collectives of enterprises and organizations, teachers, students take part in requiem rallies, lay flowers as a sign of memory and sorrow at the foot of memorials and monuments to victims of fascism, mass graves and military graves.

Flowers were laid at the Masyukovshchina Memorial Complex with the participation of the Minister of Education of the Republic of Belarus Andrei Ivanets.

“Today, employees of the Ministry of Education, together with the labor collectives of all our subordinate organizations, came here to honor the memory of those people who gave their lives for the freedom and independence of our country. A very sad date should be constantly in the center of attention of all our residents, and especially young people,” Andrei Ivanets emphasized.

The minister noted that the education system is doing serious work to perpetuate the memory of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War.

“First of all, we do this by involving our youth in specific cases of perpetuating monuments and memorable places in which battles took place, and there were also heavy losses among the civilian population or the Soviet army. Our search teams are looking for places that are not widely known, find them, restore them so that we can honor the memory of the events of the war years and their heroes,” the head of the department stated.

The participants of the mourning event honored the memory of the fallen heroes with a minute of silence.

The memorial complex "Masyukovshchina" is a special place for Belarusians. This is the territory of the mass grave of prisoners of the POW camp.

More than 80,000 people died in the Stalag 352 prisoner of war camp during the Nazi occupation. From July 1941 to the beginning of July 1944, it housed captured soldiers and officers of the USSR Armed Forces, as well as civilians driven to the camp from Minsk and the surrounding villages.

Inhuman conditions were created in the concentration camp: people lived in sheds, barracks and stables. The prisoners who arrived en masse in 1941-1942 spent the night in the open air, dying from cold, hunger and disease.

Granite monument, on which the words “Contemporaries and descendants. Bow your heads. Here, those who did not kneel before the enemy sleep an eternal sleep,” rises in the middle of a small park. Since 1964, the Eternal Flame has been burning at the foot of the monument.

On the territory of the Memorial complex there are mass graves, each of which is marked with a black marble slab, and in the center of the park, there is a white rotunda, where, under glass, there is a symbolic Book of Memory, the original of which contains the names of former prisoners of Stalag-352.

In this war, Belarus lost every third inhabitant, but the deeds of those killed in battles, grief for millions of innocent victims and the tragedy of the occupation remain in the minds of the older generation, lives in the memory of their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

A lot has been done in our country to perpetuate the memory of the dead, and this work continues. In 2016, a decree “On perpetuating the memory of those who died defending the Fatherland and preserving the memory of the victims of wars” was signed. In February 2021, a government decree approved the state program “Perpetuating the memory of those who died defending the Fatherland” for 2021-2025.

We remember. We mourn.