A major overhaul with modernization and restoration elements began at the complex last spring. All work is divided into three stages. The first stage includes the cleaning of the sculpture “The Invincible Man”, the repair of the pedestal, the monument “Roof of the Grange” and the memorial “Crown of Memory”, and the improvement of the surroundings. The second stage is the repair of the “Village Cemetery” and “Trees of Life” memorials, as well as the concrete fences for the graves and earthen urns. And the third stage provides for the repair of the illumination of the central path and the sound design of the memorial.
For the first time after the tragedy, a wooden church appeared in Khatyn in honor of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is almost an exact copy of the Church of the Ascension of the Virgin Mary, which stood here since 1794 and burned down a few months after the Khatyn tragedy – in late summer 1943. Descriptions of Surviving inventory helped recreate the shrine’s appearance. The territory adjacent to the church was also landscaped.
A major overhaul with restoration elements began at the complex in the spring of last year.
Last year, during the President’s address to the people of Belarus and the National Assembly, a proposal was made to carry out work in Khatyn in the format of youth construction. The initiative was supported: young men and women from all over the country were able to become not only visitors to the emblematic place, but also to participate in its reconstruction.
For the first time, a museum will appear in Khatyn.
A sculpture representing a young girl going to the scaffold will be installed in one of the rooms
According to the project, it is planned to place six rooms there. The first will cover the period of military campaigns and wars that took place on Belarusian soil from the 10th to the 20th century. The second will demonstrate the violation of the usual peaceful way of life of people, the first victims, the destruction of cities, the separation of families. The perception of the tragedy will be completed with a holographic image of a little girl who will tell how she ended up in a concentration camp, where her blood was taken. The project provides for the installation of an information board in the hall with data on the origin of fascism and Nazism, the Great Patriotic War. The third room will unveil the theme of the ghetto, the Holocaust, the concentration camps, the mass executions, the occupation order and the life of the civilian population under these conditions. The fourth will be devoted to the theme of punitive operations and tragic events in the colonies that the Nazis destroyed together with the people. The installations will be complemented by dynamic light screens, which are used as a virtual space to recreate the tragic image of people in a burning barn.
The last two rooms are devoted to -war period. In the fifth room, according to the project, a demonstration of historical studies on the tragedy of war and its embodiment in artistic images of art and cinema is expected. The sixth hall will become a place of worship for all victims among the civilian population, including the names of all settlements with the number of human losses, both burned and not included in the Khatyn memorial complex, and revived after the war. One of the rooms will house a sculpture representing a young girl going to the scaffold. He will become a symbol of youth, a symbol of all innocently killed Belarusians, who died before they could flourish.
The general concept of the museum is designed to experience a strong emotional shock. The visitor, passing through the halls of the new museum, will feel all the horrors and pain of the Great Patriotic War. The tour finale will be the hall of life. It seems to emphasize the key message – we are alive and we remember!
