Large-scale meeting brings together thousands of people by walls of Brest Fortress on June 22

The most important date in our history, the Day of National Remembrance of Victims of the Great Patriotic War and the Genocide of the Belarusian People, was marked in Belarus this week. 81 years ago, Nazi Germany treacherously attacked the Soviet Union. Brest Fortress was the first place Hitler's troops had hit.

The enemy had only a few hours to destroy it, but the citadel held out for a month. By tradition, on June 22, exactly at four in the morning a large-scale requiem meeting was held in the Brest Fortress. Thousands of people, including the witnesses of the legendary defense, felt it their duty to come to it.

They carried a relic: the banner of the 393rd Independent Anti-Aircraft Artillery Division. During the war, risking their lives, the Red Army soldiers hid the material in one of the casemates of the citadel. The frontier guards lowered the wreaths onto the Bug river: in June of 1941 these banks were bombarded by the Nazis, killing Soviet soldiers who were trying to get at least a sip of water.

Scarlet flowers in memory of the bloody battles and casualties of the Great Patriotic War adorned the central part of the citadel.

Yury Shuleyko, chairman of the Brest Regional Executive Committee:

“That tragic morning was a break from the life of not only the Belarusian people,  but  the whole world when the war began. The step, which the country made in its time, gave the basis, among other things, for the development of our state.”

At dawn explosions sounded in the fortress again: a military reconstruction was held at the Kobrin fortification. The key episodes of the defense were recreated. The performance featured vintage cars, motorcycles, tanks and even an airplane.

Although the reconstruction reflected the battle for the fortress only in miniature, viewers could not hold back tears of emotion. About 300 people from Belarus, Russia, Japan, China, Estonia, Czech Republic and other countries took part in the performance.