MINSK, 8 May (BelTA) - On the day of the Great Victory, 9 May, BelTA will show all episodes of the documentary series Chronicles on its YouTube channel. It is almost 10 hours of stories about feats and atrocities, about heroes and traitors. The authors of the project make a portrait of this or that person, try to understand their motivation and reasons for actions.
The first episode of Chronicles was released in March 2023. It was about Maria Osipova and Elena Mazanik who liquidated Wilhelm Kube. On the one hand, a lot has been filmed and written about the operation to liquidate the Minsk gauleiter. But the historians, who were featured in the episode, shared interesting details. For example, after the Great Patriotic War Maria Osipova stood up for the rights and reputation of Minsk underground fighters. At that time, not many people were ready to take such a risk.
As the author of the documentary project Inna Sogalovich notes, Chronicles is a program about heroes and traitors. “Both are not born. They become them. It is a choice of everyone. It is noteworthy that the Nazi collaborators often justified their atrocities by saying that the Soviet authorities had somehow infringed on their rights. For example, Yevgeny Deschner believed that if he had been drafted into the Red Army, he would have fought against fascism together with others. And Semyon Serafimovich, by killing civilians, was taking revenge for the nationalization of his mill. Both killed thousands of people. The Supreme Court found them guilty of genocide of the Belarusian people, though postmortem,” Inna Sogalovich said.
At the same time, partisans, military men and doctors were ready to sacrifice their lives for the Victory. Professor Yevgeny Klumov could have left the occupied Minsk, but became an underground fighter behind the enemy lines. Konstantin Zaslonov was hunted even after his death. Minai Shmyrev’s children were killed by the Nazis.
“In Chronicles we try to tell not only about feats and atrocities. We tell about a person: his family, education, and way of life. Thus we draw up their portraits. The episode about one of the executioners of Khatyn, Yevhen Meleshko, has gained the most views so far. Today we know a lot about the tragedy of this Belarusian village. But when we talk about its executioners, we immediately think of Vasyura. But even he called Meleshko a real sadist in his testimony,” the Chronicles author said.
New episodes are released once a month. All of them have German subtitles. Inna Sogalovich believes that viewers are always interested in the stories of specific people. Through them the authors narrate the events of the Great Patriotic War.
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