On May 24, members of the commission to perpetuate the memory of Fatherland Defenders and War Victims, established at the Viciebsk Regional Executive Committee, met with representatives of the "Chajsy" civil initiative. Citizens officials asked a dozen questions, but only few of them heard the distinct answers.
The meeting was held in the auditorium of Mazałava village council, where the chairman of the committee Ksenia Karabach and commission secretary Irina Tarasova responded to the issues raised in collective petitions, members of the initiative. This was the second meeting of the executive committee of officials with the public about a half year ago found graves near the villages Chajsy and Drykolle.
Beginning of the meeting, Chairman of the Commission read out a response director of the Institute of History, National Academy of Sciences at the request of the commission. The response states that the institution does not possess any documents on these graves. In contrast to the conclusion reached earlier by archaeologist 52nd search battalion Vadim Tomilin, who said that the dumping of the investigated they allegedly belong to the times of war, the director of the history institute noted that "... on the basis of material available to make an accurate conclusion regarding waste belonging to temporal particular period is not possible. "
Based on the response, the head of the district election commission declared: "There is no argument either in your or in our favor." Catching Xenia Karabach this Freudian reservation activist Leonid Olehnovich asked her: "And what's your favor?" The answer to this question, he did not wait for…
The head of the civil initiative "Chajsy" Jan Dzyarzhautsau briefed Xenia Karabach on the work done by the members of the recent initiatives of the new information received from different sources, and showed regular argued that in the woods near Chajsy are the victims of Stalin's regime... he also asked the clerk to inform about the current whereabouts of the remains, raised the 52nd search battalion. As it turned out, it remains to ascertain all the circumstances of the case will be stored in the territory of the Mazałava village council. However, the specific location of their storage has not been named, for unknown reasons.
Local historian Vladimir Ivanov assured the district commission, the members of the civil initiative is not pursuing any extremist political or tactical goals, and guided solely by a sense of civic responsibility for the restoration of historical truth and justice. He called attention to this fact: in the NKVD there was a special order forbidding indicate the place of execution and burial. Therefore, documentary evidence that in the woods north of the village of Chajsy found the remains of victims of the Stalinist regime is impossible to find. And the committee members must understand this.
According to local lore, in such circumstances when making decisions the commission should be guided by circumstantial evidence. And first of all it is the memories of local residents, who before the war even though they were children, but from my own observations and parent know stories about places of mass executions. It should be understood by the fact that in addition to the search battalion raised there remains intact burial. These burial, exhumation if conducted in a professional, should be a direct proof of the determination of temporal supplies remains found there.
Summing up, Xenia Karabach said that she heard the comments made by community activists. However, she stressed that the commission members, who are representatives of executive authorities are obliged to make decisions based only on hard evidence. Commission Chairman promised that the museum will give district employees instructed to document the memories of local residents about unregistered graves in a forest. All this is good, but the question arises: why this has not been done before? After all the witnesses – elderly people, many sick, and one of them died recently. We must hurry.
Despite the fact that outwardly meeting was held in a constructive way, Xenia Karabach made several incomprehensible claims towards the members of the initiative. They say that despite the fact that the appeal is over forty signatures, a second meeting comes one and the same composition activists. The second claim, which sounded to her a few times, it was a remark about the absence of a part of the direct descendants of the victims of the initiative, the Sparrow killed in the forest. How does the presence of people who could potentially be executed relatives during the years of Stalinism, could affect the activities of the initiative, it is not explained. In response to these accusations the activists present at the meeting stressed: that their case has important social significance, although any concerned citizens, including relatives of the repressed, are free to join the "Chajsy" initiative and to become its members.
