MINSK, 18 March (BelTA) - The Belarusian National Library hosted a ceremony to launch the book penned by Ozarichi former prisoners Arkady Shkuran and Mikhail Sinkevich “Polesie: Tragedy and Memory: Crimes of the Wehrmacht. Ozarichi Death Camp, 1944”, BelTA has learned.
“Ozarichi was a monstrous concentration camp. I was 10 years old. I described the terrible pictures that stuck in my memory on the pages of the book. We have collected the historical materials that reflect real events. Anyone can get a truthful answer to the question about what happened in the Ozarichi in 1944,” Arkady Shkuran said.
According to him, the nearly 700-page book outlines the documentary facts in the chronological order. “We described what the concentration camp was, the appalling conditions people were kept: open air, hunger, cold, typhus epidemic, and mass shootings. We survived these terrors to describe them in the book. The cover depicts an angel with a burning lamp in the hands who bows low to the holy land of Ozarichi and illuminates the way to future generations to make sure the Ozarichi tragedy never happens again,” he said.
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19 March marks 75 years since the liberation of the prisoners of the Ozarichi death camp. The book will help preserve the memory of both the victims and the survivors. “Our goal was to bring forward the documentary facts of that war, the memories of ordinary participants and eyewitnesses to the younger generation, who live in a time when the history is questioned and there are attempts in some countries to whitewash the Nazi criminals. Our project is of high historical, social and cultural importance. It is based on historical documents from Belarus, Russia, and Germany. It holds an undoubted value as it revives the national memory of the victims of the Nazism and former prisoners of concentration camps, prisons, ghettos and aims to ensure peace among nations,” said Mikhail Sinkevich, the co-author of the book.
The exhibition modules on the Ozarichi death camp went on show as part of the traveling exhibition Maly Trostenets Death Camp. History and Memory to show one of the worst Wehrmacht crimes committed during the Second World War.
A thematic book exhibition has been also put on view to display about 30 documents from the library's collection about the inhuman policies towards civilians in the war years. The exhibition features books based on the memories of prisoners, the memoirs of the general of the 65th Army Pavel Batov, whose units liberated the Ozarichi death camp, materials from the Nuremberg trials on war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the relevant scientific works.
Ozarichi was a complex of German concentration camps. In March 1944, the 9th Army of the Wehrmacht with General Josef Harpe in command set up three temporary concentration camps near the villages of Dert, Ozarichi, and Podosinnik. These death camps were used to exterminate contagious patients, handicapped and elderly people, women with more than two children, children under ten, and others whom the Wehrmacht considered inapt for work. Before the prisoners were freed by the 65th Army of the 1st Belarusian Front on 17 March 1944, some 9,000-13,000 people were killed there.
Photos by Maksim Guchek
