Day of Remembrance of the Great Patriotic War Victims at the Brest Fortress

The last peaceful day… Central streets of Brest are packed with reenactors:  Soviet-style outfits, waltz to the music from turntables, old-time cars – that was the introduction to the Day of Remembrance of the Great Patriotic War Victims. A traditionally sleepless night gathered in Brest and the Brest Fortress thousands of people on the night of 22 June. These people came to commemorate one of the most tragic pages in the history of the Belarusian people: 77 years ago at 4a.m. the Nazi Germany launched its first attack on the Soviet Union.

The commemorative meeting gathered about 10,000 people in the Brest memorial complex. Some fifteen delegations, including official delegations from Moscow, Stavropol, and Leningrad Oblast, came to Brest to go down the Road of Memory.

The ceremony began at half past four in the morning with a laser version of "Invasion" from Dmitri Shostakovich's famous symphony. The predawn silence was broken by machine-gun shots and volleys of artillery batteries. The screen installed near the Eternal Flame showed photos of the fortress defenders. The hosts told the stories of their heroic death.

The reenactment “22 June. Brest Fortress” started at 5.00a.m. in the Kobrin fortification immediately after a commemorative meeting. The reenactment featured more than 500 history buffs and also pyrotechnics, an artillery gun, horse border patrols, an armored car, motorcycles, passenger and freight cars. All in all, the 8th edition of the international military and historical reenactment “22 June. Brest Fortress” brought together nearly 1,500 reenactors from 11 countries: Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Austria, Czechia, Latvia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Japan and China.

Day of Remembrance of the Great Patriotic War Victims in our photo essay from Brest and the heroic citadel.