14. Read the text aad get ready to speak about Khatyn: khatyn: the tragedy of the belarusian nation

March, 22, 1943 the group of fascists under Dirlewanger's command had surrounded the village Khatyn. All the inhabitants of Khatyn — women, old men and children — were driven to a shed and burnt. Doors of the shed had failed under the pressure of flaring bodies. But it was rather difficult and almost impossible to rescue. Those who were trying to escape from the fiery ring were immediately shot 149 men, and among them 76 children had been forever lain in one communal grave.

The only person from the adult inhabitants who had rescued was Iosif Kaminsky. He laid near the body of his son for a long time and was covered with wounds and burns. Only after two days people picked him up, hid and cured him. The sculptor Sergey Selikhanov saw in I.I. Kaminsky the prototype of his sculpture of the man who goes along the burnt ground of Khatyn, carrying the body of his son in his hands.

The fiery breach in black marble slabs flares here eternally. They are stacked as a two - level fallen roof just there where people of Khatyn were burnt alive. And on the place of each of 26 houses are the bottom parts of framework made of concrete beams. Above them were built chimneys-arrows, topped with bronze bells. Their sad ringing is floating and floating above the fields and forests making us always remember me victims of this tragedy.

The concrete path has run between previous yards of Khatyn. From the sculptural composition it conducts directly to the memorial ensemble which has immortalized the memory of «ther villages of Belarus, which shared the destiny of Khatyn. The destiny of each of them represents one of the pages of the tragedy began by fascists on the ground of Belarus. 136 villages were completely destroyed by the invaders. They were not restored even after the war. There was nobody to restore. Grandfathers and fathers, children and grandsons — all were burnt alive and were buried in communal graves. In the memorial urns established as memory monuments, the ground ofthese ashes is stored.

And such a destiny was prepared by the fascists to the whole territory of Belarus, to all Soviet people, in the language of aggressors it referred to simple and terrible words — "a dead zone". Only in Werhnedvinsk region they exterminated completely 34 villages together witk people.

The direct stone wall adjoins to strict squares of monuments. Names of 296 Belarusian villages burnt together with the inhabitants are written on it. They have 3 risen from the ashes after the war. They were rebuilt by fellow countrymen of the victims.

The memorial wall was constructed in memory of prisoners of the camps of death. This severe ferro-concrete construction recollects places of mass destruc- tion of people. Along the entire wall — niches with pig-iron lattices. Memorial i plates with the names of the camps of death created by the fascists in the terri­tory of our republic during the war and numbers are placed in these niches. They symbolize the crematoriums where people were burnt in furnaces, strangled in gas chambers, badgered by sheep-dogs.

In the concentration camps 206,500 citizens were shot, tortured and burnt. f In the Polotsk camp of death — more than 150,000 lives have been destroyed. In Gomel — near 100,000.

209 cities and city settlements were transformed into ruins, 9200 villages were burnt.

Under me decision of the government of Belarus the memorial complex of the ,]

burnt village Khatyn has been erected. Architects Jury Gradov, Valentine Zanko- \ vich, Leonid Levin, sculptor Sergey Selikhanov, the chief engineer of the project i Vasily Makarevich have immortalized indestructible courage of the people of \ Belarus within the World War Two in memory of the victims of fascists' invasion.

During one of the celebrations of the liberation of the Republic of Belarus \ from German aggressors the torch has been delivered to Khatyn, The fire was \ brought from the Eternal flame that burns at the monument of the Victory in Minsk. The sacred flame is burning under the three birches and reminds people each fourth victim of our republic. People come here every day, day after day.