The remains of 30 Red Army soldiers were reburied in the Vitebsk region
Field search operations from May 10 to 19 were conducted by servicemen of the 52nd Separate Specialized Battalion in conjunction with the Moscow Regional Public Patriotic Organization "Western Frontier". A total of 30 soldiers' remains were found, with the names of 19 of them identified. This is a rarity for such a significant search result. "Last year, the remains of 468 people were exhumed. These were Red Army soldiers and officers of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, as well as civilians. And we only know the names of two of those who were laid to rest in 2021. Today's solemn ceremony is particularly significant for us, as it takes place on the eve of the Day of National Remembrance of the Victims of the Great Patriotic War. We will soon mark another anniversary of the start of Operation Bagration – the date from which the liberation of both the Vitebsk region and all of Belarus began. Here are people who have been engaged in difficult search work for decades. Thank you to those who, day after day, year after year, continue this sacred and very important work for all of us," said Vladimir Terentyev, Chairman of the Vitebsk Regional Council of Deputies, who attended the reburial ceremony.
Among the Red Army soldiers who found their final resting place today at the military burial site were 19 soldiers of the separate ski battalion of the 274th Rifle Division. The unit perished on December 31, 1943. It participated in an offensive operation near the villages of Lobany and Zazeby. It was their names that became known to the searchers after studying the archives. "During the war years, the names of the settlements were recorded incorrectly, and at first, we started searching in the wrong place. Later, thanks to a relative of one of the fallen, the correct location was established. The soldiers were at different depths in the mass grave. Most likely, it was an explosion crater that killed the Red Army soldiers," Anatoly Burdo, chairman of the Vitebsk youth public association "Military-Patriotic Club "Poisk" (Search), told a BELTA correspondent.
To honor the memory of the fallen relative of Sergeant Vasily Isaev, his nephew, retired police lieutenant colonel Alexander Popov, came from Moscow. He said that at his mother's request, he had been searching for information about her brother since 2009. He found out that there was an error in the documents and the names of the villages were confused, which is why the searchers did not find the remains of the Red Army soldiers on the first attempt. A fragment of a map helped, which indicated these specific villages. It was superimposed on modern geodata, and the location of the mass grave of the ski battalion was determined. "It was discovered only in the autumn of last year. My uncle was buried here. Before that, I searched for information about him in the archives of the Ministry of Defense and in open sources. Then I met local searchers who exhumed the remains of all the soldiers of the battalion and other Red Army warriors. Unfortunately, my mother could not come because she is already 84 years old, and I arrived to honor my uncle's memory," shared the guest from Moscow.-0-
