A photo gallery of pre-war photographs of local residents is part of the exposition of the Shklov Regional Museum of Local History, dedicated to the victims of the genocide.
People look from the past from yellowed photographs, smile and enjoy life ... They still do not know that the terrible word “war” will soon burst into their lives. And an even more terrible word is "genocide", during which everyone is destroyed - women, children, and the elderly ... Simply because they are of a different nationality and a different faith.
Among modern photographs of military monuments, there is also a photo of a section of the wailing wall of the famous Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem with the names of settlements in which the Jewish population suffered massively, including Shklov. Recall: according to the 1939 census, 2,132 Jews lived in our country, or 26.7% of the total population. And according to the 2009 census, only 19 people identified themselves as Jews. The tragedy during the war years affected the reduction in numbers.
“The section “Shklovshchina during the Great Patriotic War” has been operating with us since 2007,” says the director of the museum, Larisa Silivestrova. – On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Belarus, in 2019, the photo exhibition “Wailing Wall” was supplemented by a mini-exhibition “In the wake of the war”, which presents objects found during search expeditions. Nearby is the installation "Farewell to arms!". Well, in 2021-22, the museum staff actively studied new materials on the fact of the policy of genocide of the Nazi invaders in the Shklov region. Work in the Mogilev archive, on search sites, communication with witnesses of those events, acquaintance with scientific research yielded results. By September 1 of the outgoing year, the reconstruction of the section of the museum on the topic “Genocide of the Belarusian people” was completed. And until that time, the exhibition "Genocide - memory without a statute of limitations" was operating.
The "Wailing Wall" was supplemented with photographs and materials from the funds of the regional and district museums. Various documents on the topic of genocide were posted.
A contour map with the names of villages burned by the Nazis in the Shklov region... A selection of books on the topic of the genocide of the Belarusian people... The "Sands" installation, consisting of an open suitcase with a broken photograph, a clock and a children's toy, which symbolizes the tragedy of the Jewish people... All this can be seen by every visitor to the museum. But the most important thing is for the younger generation. That is why hundreds of Shklov children visited the museum in 2022.
The work of the Shklov Museum was highly appreciated. In December, in Mogilev, in the Rodina cinema, a solemn summing up of the results of regional civil-patriotic projects took place. According to the results of the competition for the best museum exposition dedicated to the victims of the genocide in the Mogilev region during the Great Patriotic War, our museum took 3rd place.
