«Voronovskaya gazeta« is starting a project “The Story of One Exhibit”
There are 23 museums and museum rooms, ethnographic corners, expositions of local history, literary and historical, ethnographic, military glory in the Voronovo district. Each of them is unique and inimitable. All of them are treasuries of our memory. Through the exhibits they contain we can touch our past, see and touch things that have long ago disappeared from use but still preserve the spirit of an entire era and the memory of people and events. Joyful, daily, tragic… Each item has its own history and destiny.
Communication of the Victory
A military field telephone cannot be compared to a modern smartphone, of course. But those bulky devices were the means of communication and information transfer during the Great Patriotic War. Its mobility was provided by soldiers moving behind Red Army units. Following the front, these 5 kg instruments were "walking" on the shoulder of soldiers along the military roads. That is how communication and coordination of the entire military operation, so essential to the Great Victory, were provided.
They listened to the sky and informed the earth
One of such telephones "TAI-43" is in the museum of military glory of the secondary school in Pogorodno. The valuable exhibit gives an idea of what was used by the soldiers of the 10th Detached Alert and Communications Battalion. One of its observation posts was in the woods near the village of Podi, near Pogorodno. The task of the five female communicators was to observe the sky day and night and determine the type, number and altitude of enemy planes as they appeared, and relay the information to the company post. This is exactly for what military field telephones were used.
— The resident Galina Sergeyeva Kharkova gave it to the museum in 2010. She is one of the initiators of the museum revival, which immortalized the memory of her father, who was the chief of communications the 10th air surveillance, warning and communication battalion, P. E. Burtsev, - said the veteran teacher of the school in Pogorodno Anna Matveevna Ruselevich, who stood at the very origins of the museum in 1985. She was the head of the museum for many years. At that time the museum was just about to open after reconstruction. In the renovated interior of the museum the military field telephones and the switchboard took their place. There is a dugout with various objects of military life, which conveys the atmosphere of that time. The museum of military glory is often visited by post-Soviet citizens and local schoolchildren. The museum is especially popular in summer.
The birch trees rustles, where the girls were...
The role of guides is performed by members of the 'Poisk' club and the current head of the museum, Anna Vladislavovna Yushko. This year, together with the workers of the local culture centre, they replanted young birches near the memorial sign on the place where the girls had perished. Now there are four of them. Three of the trees stand together, and one stands apart. Their number and location symbolise the tragedy of the distant 1945 when in an unequal battle with the bandits on the territory of already liberated Belarus Their number and location symbolise the tragedy of 1945 when in an unequal battle with the bandits on the territory of liberated Belarus four solder girls died: Shura Terekhina, Katya Dyachkina and Valya Polikanova died at the earth-post, while Tanya Ponomaryova died later from the recieved wounds at hospital in Lida.
Olga VOROBIEVA,
Photo by Oleg BELSKIY and from the museum's archive.
Перевод: Ангелина Дудевич, студентка ГрГУ им. Я.Купалы.
