On May 8 and 9, 2020, the whole world will celebrate the 75th anniversary of Victory Day. Victory Day, generally known as VE Day (Great Britain), is a day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces on the 8 May 1945.
The events of the great war of liberation against fascism are immortalized in monuments, memorials, memorial signs, plaques and busts. There are more than 8500 symbols of the unfading memory of the great feat of the people on the territory of Belarus.
I decided to make a catalog and an interactive map of monuments dedicated to this war, which are located in Minsk (Belarus) near my house.
I found more than 24 monuments, busts, memorials, established in honor of the heroes of the World War II and the Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Belarus and the countries of the former USSR.
The largest and most touching for the soul is a memorial complex “Trascianiec”. It is built on the place of the eponymous concentration camp, which operated during the World War II. Camp " Trascianiec " is the fourth in the number of people killed in it after the notorious Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek.
This largest death camp was established in the autumn of 1941 on the territory of Belarus. There were killed civilians and prisoners of war from all countries of the Soviet Union and citizens of the Jewish nationality of Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland. A total of 206,500 citizens were tortured, shot and burned by the Nazis in camp “Trascianiec”.
The camp included several places where people were massively destroyed:
- death camp near the village of Maly Trostenets,
- Blagovshchina - a place of mass executions,
- Shashkovka - a place of mass burning of people.
The memorial complex “Trascianiec” was built quite recently and is located on the territory of the capital of Belarus.
Its territory unites places of mass destruction of people (112 hectares) and consists of two parts:
- 1st - the territory of the death camp and tract Shashkovka (60 hectares), the opening took place on June 22, 2015.
- 2nd - the territory of the former tract Blagovshchina (52 hectares), the opening took place on June 29, 2018.
At the entrance to the complex you will see a huge monument “Gates of Memory” . This is a 10 meter sculpture, weighing 35 tons, made of bronze. On it are clearly visible figures of emaciated prisoners of a fascist concentration camp. Their bodies are intertwined with the gates and barbed wire, which symbolizes the impossibility of escaping from captivity. The gate was specially made rigidly, roughly, like a scar from a terrible wound in the heart. A scar that has healed, but remains forever. The bodies of the prisoners are as if pressed into these bronze doors, and their faces express incredible pain and hopelessness.
You will see many monuments on the territory of the complex: Road of memory, Road of death, Cremation pit monument, Memorial sign at the site of the burning of 6500 people, Memorial stone at the place of mass burial of civilians in 1941–1945, Monument to the victims of the camp “Trascianiec” ets.
On March 28, 2019 a monument to the victims of Nazism «the Array of Names», was opened. The monument is dedicated to the memory of more than 10 thousand Austrian citizens of Jewish origin, who were killed in the Trostenets death camp in 1941-42. The creation of the monument was initiated by the Austrian public organization “IM-MER”.
The monument consists of ten columns mounted on a pedestal, which symbolize ten trains with Austrian Jews deported from Vienna to Trascianiec. They show the names of the victims (without last names), partially blurred and half-erased.
In addition to the memorial complex in Minsk, other monuments of military history can be found in the streets and squares: big Mosaic panel “Partisans”, Monument “Belarus partisan”, Alley of Pioneers Heroes, Memorial sign to the soldiers of Kazakhstan, St. George’s Church and Monument, Monuments to unknown heroes.
Welcome to Belarus!
I post a map of monuments and brief information about them in English.
77 years since VE Day, huh? Time sure flies, but it’s important we remember and honor the brave folks who fought for our freedom. 