Nice benches? White, neat, made of concrete. Whoever remembers school desks will immediately remember how he sat at school at such desks.
And so it was intended. These benches should represent the school class. Only not an ordinary class, but a dead one.
And a river of blood flows from him. Baby blood.
This is a memorial in the village of Krasny Bereg in the Gomel region. During the war, one of the most creepy concentration camps of the Second World War was located here. The Germans gathered here our Belarusian children aged from 4 to 15 years old from the neighboring districts of the Gomel region. Collected in order to pump out their blood. Children's blood was intended for transfusion to wounded Germans in hospitals. It was believed that children's blood is healthier, cleaner than that of adults, so they sucked it out of children as much as they could.
Basically, blood was taken from veins, but here, in Krasny Bereg, a new - "scientific" - method of blood sampling was also tested. Children were hung under the arms, squeezed chest. In order to prevent the blood from clotting, a special injection was made. The skin on the feet was cut off - or deep cuts were made in them. All blood drained into sealed trays.
And then - everything, bloodless waste material. The bodies of the children were taken away and burned.
Promotional video:
Almost 2000 children passed through this terrible place. Most died. Those who were stronger and survived were sold into slavery to Germany. Only 9 people survived.
The blackboard of this "Dead Class" reproduces a letter from one of the girls who found herself in the hell of a slave life. The mind refuses to perceive these simple words, so monstrous is what this girl, one of many, many thousands, writes about.
Those who sometimes begin to idealize the Germans, they say, they behaved culturally, it is useful to bring them to Krasny Bereg and tell what happened here, how the “cultured” Germans behaved here.
The memorial is not pretentious at all, it occupies a small area among apple orchards.
A sculpture of a girl who threw up her hands in a pitiful attempt to defend herself, "Dead Class", a boat of an unfulfilled dream and stained-glass windows from children's drawings - that's all.
Yes, there is also a map of children's concentration camps on the territory of Belarus, since Krasny Bereg was not alone.
There were 14 of them.
Here in 2017, they showed the visit of the Pope to Auschwitz, how he walks there, bows in pictures, and around a bunch of photo reporters clicking cameras.
There are no reporters in Krasny Bereg, only rare tourists. It is unlikely that the Pope has ever heard of the Red Coast. Our pain only hurts us.
It's good that such memorials are made. Otherwise, the old people, remembering the war, are dying out, and soon there will be no one to tell what happened in the war on our land. We must not forget this. If we forget such troubles, they can happen again.