BREST, 23 September (BelTA) – A delegation of Brest Oblast will visit Poland on 24 and 25 September to attend commemorative events to mark the 75th anniversary of mass shootings of Soviet prisoners of war, First Secretary of the Brest Oblast Committee of the BRSM Youth Union Viktor Ivanov told BelTA.
The Belarusian delegation will be comprised of representatives of the BRSM Youth Union, veterans of the Armed Forces, and members of the war history club Garnizon. Together with representatives of Poland's Union of the Youth of Rural Areas and the administration of Biala Podlaska County, the Belarusians will hold a flower-laying ceremony and light candles at the grave sites of Red Army soldiers. The volunteers will also spruce up the graves of Soviet soldiers.
“The war prisoner camp near Biala Podlaska saw Brest Fortress defenders, the defenders of Belarus and Brest Oblast. Some 26,000 people were killed near the village of Husinka in late September-early October 1941. Today there are four graves with more than 130,000 Soviet POWs,” Viktor Ivanov said.
The Belarusian delegation has plans to take a few handfuls of soil from that place and put the soil in a special capsule. In October, the capsule will be handed over to the crypt of the Church of All Saints in Minsk.
The first Belarusian-Polish joint campaign to spruce up the graves of Soviet POWs was organized in 2012. Since then, Belarusian and Polish youth have been holding such maintenance campaigns regularly.
