Prosecutor General of the Republic of Belarus Andrei Shved spoke before the screening, and it’s no coincidence, because the dilogy was filmed on the initiative of the Prosecutor General’s Office. He reminded that nowhere was such a scale of tragedy as on the territory of the BSSR, and therefore it is very important for us, knowing the history, to understand what is behind the modern events. «80 years ago, our ancestors with you withstood a terrible war. And our task, our sacred duty is to preserve the memory of their feat, of the suffering they endured. We must remember it and pass it on to our descendants, so that our children and grandchildren know the truth about those terrible events and that great feat,» said Andrei Shved.
Director of the Documentary Film Studio Letopis of the National Film Studio Belarusfilm Vladimir Milosh is convinced that everyone should watch this dilogy: «These two movies (their timing is 39 minutes each) are united by one common theme — the genocide of the Belarusian people during the Great Patriotic War. One tells about those death camps, which were created on our territory by fascist invaders to exterminate the peaceful population, the second one is devoted to the tragic fate of people, who together with their settlements were often burned alive... These movies should draw a line under the investigation that was launched by the Prosecutor General’s Office in 2021 and which is still ongoing. New data is emerging and perhaps at some point another movie will be made, based on the already new data.»
The shooting team worked in close contact with the General Prosecutor’s Office. To create a truly truthful movie, they visited Ozarichi, Trostenets, Krasny Bereg, Domachevo... «It’s not an easy topic... But it was important to tell about it,» — believes Vladimir Milosh. «We also used archive footage. What impressed me most of all were the German captured photos, where the murders are shown in an incredibly violent way. It’s even hard to imagine that people did it, because it seemed that children, old men, women were killed by beasts...
But we have to admit, because everything is documented, that such inhumanity existed. And thanks to our new movies we will remind about it, about the human losses suffered by Belarus. It is important not to forget what war is, so that it will never happen again.»
This dilogy is the last work of the famous Belarusian director Alexander Anisimov, who, unfortunately, did not live to see the premiere, as did the author of the script Artur Zelsky, the former director of the Khatyn Memorial Complex... At the final stage of this project, which had been created for two years, was taken up by the director Vladimir Lutsky, who also had already been involved in the script of this dilogy.
Deputy Head of the Department for Supervision over the Investigation of Particularly Important Criminal Cases of the Prosecutor General’s Office Sergei Shikunets (he was directly involved in the shooting of the movies) mentioned that the investigation into the genocide of the Belarusian people, which was initiated by the President of Belarus, has been going on for more than four years. His main conclusion is that the scale of the tragedy is even bigger than previously thought. The number of destroyed villages has increased. The investigation has established more than 3 thousand previously unknown to us places of extermination of people and more than 100 unknown death camps, dozens of previously unknown punitive operations.
«One investigation is not enough, because on the perimeter of our country there is active work on rewriting history, attempts to glorify Nazism,» says Sergei Shikunets. «There is an acute question of using the results of the investigation, including in the information sphere of our state. That’s why on our initiative it was decided to create, together with the National Film Studio Belarusfilm, separate films dedicated to the genocide of the Belarusian people. In the death camps, civilians were subjected to total annihilation on a daily basis. The Nazis and their accomplices destroyed settlements together with their inhabitants... That is why our task is to tell the objective truth about those tragic stories, which are now trying to be rewritten.»
Valery Nadtochayev, a senior researcher of the Center of Military History of Belarus at the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, also took part in the shooting of the dilogy.
«Unfortunately, human memory is peculiar to forget. And we’re not talking about the memory of one person, because those who were participants of the Great Patriotic War, who lived through it as children in the occupied territory, will never forget about it. And their children will know about these horrors from their words,» the historian is convinced. «However, time passes and after generations people start to talk less about it, memories disappear together with witnesses, participants of the war... That is why it is so important for us to remind about the Great Patriotic War. It was coordinately different from other wars, because for the first time the goal of total annihilation of the population was set. According to the plan Ost, the Nazis wanted to exterminate 75 % and numb 25 %. Some bearers of memory were killed, others were reformatted, recoded and their children could be told any nonsense about our territory... It was not without reason that the Nazis coined the term „subhuman“ („Untermensch“), and also called the partisans bandits, even though they themselves invaded our territory. Even before they attacked us, they had created certain structures aimed at destroying people. We must always remember the beastly face of fascism...»
Irina PRIMAK
BelTA Preview
