A monument to the victims of genocide created by a Vitebsk sculptor will be erected in Senno

"The model of the cultural object is ready and approved by the leadership of the Senno district, it will appear in the district center on the eve of City Day, which falls on June 10 this year," Ivan Kazak said. The monument to the victims of genocide is a combination of several symbolic zones. On the slab on the right, a settlement is depicted - with wooden houses, wire fences hanging over them. The middle of the composition is a steep descent, along which people are walking. They are going to be shot, and in each figure, there is a sense of doom and the realization that this descent leads to the grave and there is no way back. On the left of the monument, a part of an ordinary house is depicted - a fragment of a roof, a window with a candle, and in front of it a stool, on which a hunched old mother sits, mourning the children and acquaintances who were taken to certain death by the fascists. In the corner above the window, there will be an icon of the Kazan Mother of God - as a symbol of God's help to all mothers who lost loved ones in the war.

The monument is planned to be made of composite materials. It will be about 2.7 m high and more than 3 m wide. This will be the first object to introduce visitors to the thematic exhibition in the district House of Crafts.

The exhibition on the tragedy of the genocide of the residents of the Senno district will be located in the basement of the building, where in the late 19th - early 20th centuries there was a spirit-purification warehouse. During the Great Patriotic War, the fascists set up a prison here for prisoners of war and those detained for contact with partisans. In the upper floors of the warehouse, the occupiers organized a sabotage school, where they trained saboteurs, mainly from women and teenagers, for work in partisan detachments.

Currently, the basement floor, which housed a shop until recently, is undergoing cleaning of walls, ceiling, and floor to reveal the authentic red brickwork. According to cultural workers, the old brick is very durable and well-preserved, but it will require conservation to prevent crumbling.

On City Day, an exhibition will open here, consisting of two zones – historical and interactive. The first will recreate a fragment of a prison, while the second, modernized zone, will be used for classes with schoolchildren. The exhibition will be complemented by replicas of photo documents, archival photographs, including those of the destroyed city and the Sennon residents taken into slavery, as well as some personal belongings of those shot. The Director of the Sennon Historical and Local Lore Museum, Iya Shubko, said that before the war, the district center housed a Catholic church, two Orthodox churches, and six synagogues. At the end of December 1941, 965 people were shot here – prisoners of the local ghetto.

BELTA.