Press releases

On 22 March Belarus will mark the 75th anniversary of the Khatyn tragedy. The Nazis destroyed the peaceful Belarusian village of 26 houses killing 149 people, including 75 children under 16, the youngest of whom was only 7 weeks old. The terrible events of the spring 1943 fill the hearts of Belarusians with pain. Belarus will hold a series of events to mark the 75th anniversary of the Khatyn tragedy.

The restored Come and See war drama directed by Elem Klimov based on Ales Adamovich’s script (Mosfilm, 1985) will be screened in the Dom Kino cinema house in Minsk on 19 March.

The Come and See screening in Minsk is a joint action of Belarusfilm and Mosfilm studios with the support of the Belarusian Union of Cinematographers.

Restored by Mosfilm, the movie won the Best Restored Film Award at the Venice Classics in 2017.

The film was premiered at the Moscow International Film Festival in the summer of 1985 where it won the Golden Prize and FIPRESCI award. For more than 30 years since its release the film has won awards at many prestigious film festivals. In 1985 it was nominated by the Soviet Union for the Oscar in the Best foreign language film category.

Come and See was recognized by the Sovetsky Ekran magazine readers as the best film of 1986. It has gained a foothold in many movie rankings, including foreign ones. The film holds a 95% “freshness” rating on the Rotten Tomatoes scale. It ranks sixth on the Time Out Magazine list of 50 best war movies of all time, simultaneously being the best film about World War II. In 2008 the Empire magazine included the movie into the list of the 500 greatest movies of all time. In the survey conducted by the British magazine Sight & Sound among producers in 2012, the movie placed 30th on the list of the best films of all time.

The nationwide campaign “Youth Remembers” to clean up the Khatyn memorial complex will be held on 19 March. Taking part in the event will be representatives of the student construction brigades' movement, students and young workers.

Four-part documentary “Khatyn. War Without Rules” on Belarus 3 TV channel on 20 March

The Belarus 3 TV channel premieres the four-part documentary “Khatyn. War Without Rules” dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the tragedy in the Belarusian village on 20 March.

Viewers will see the four-part documentary: “Reasons for Silence”, “Executioners and Victims”, “Memorial”, “Fire Sisters of Khatyn”. The documentary will tell about the history of the Khatyn Memorial, will talk about the importance of remembrance to the younger generation, the fate of people who miraculously managed to avoid the death in fire.

The film will chronicle the events in the early March 1943 and use the partial reconstruction of those events, and offer comments by authoritative experts. The film was directed by Alyona Levai. The team working on the documentary involved istorians, archivists, architects, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists,” said the author and editor Ales Zelenko.

The book “Khatyn, the Tragedy of the Belarusian People” has been published by the Petrus Brovka Belarusian Encyclopedia publishing house in Belarusian, Russian and English to mark the 75th anniversary of the Khatyn tragedy.

The book tells the history of Khatyn since the 16th century, provides the information on the tragedy of Khatyn and other Belarusian villages destroyed by the Nazis in the Great Patriotic War, and also the history of the Khatyn Memorial. The book has been written by Khatyn Memorial Director Artur Zelsky.

The book was presented at the National Library of Belarus on 16 March. The book will be available at the Khatyn Memorial and also in the libraries of Minsk Oblast.

Pavel Voinitsky’s sculpture Unbowed was unveiled at the Khatyn Memorial in January 2018. The sculpture dedication was the first in a series of events dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Khatyn tragedy.

According to director Artur Zelsky, the sculpture reflects the tragedy of Khatyn and also thousands of other villages that shared its fate. The sculpture reveals one of the most terrible pages of the war - the tragedy of children. The sculpture Unbowed depicts the image of a fragile young girl who is taking a walk for the last time in her life.

The Roads of Memory competition is held in the following nominations: The History of the War in Faces, Khatyn’s Sisters, Turning Over the Family Album Pages, and The War in the Memory of the Generations. The competition is open to individual participants and teams in three age categories: 10-14, 15-17, and 17-22 years old.

The Khatyn’s Sisters nomination considers research works on the history of villages burned during the Great Patriotic War (pre-war, military and post-war history). Competitive works should contain information materials about the village, the lives of eyewitnesses and memories of residents, photographs of the village of different time periods.