GOMEL, Belarus, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) -- On Sept. 1, Belarusian children returned to school for Knowledge Day. At an open-air symbolic classroom at the Children -- War Victims memorial complex in Krasny Bereg, an agro-town in Zhlobin District, Gomel Region, there were no pupils -- only silence.
Under a gray sky and a fine drizzle, rows of empty white desks were adorned with red carnations left by visitors. On the blackboard was a letter, written by Belarusian girl Katya Susanina on her 15th birthday during the WWII.
"Dear, kind Daddy! I am writing you this letter from German captivity. When you, Daddy, read this letter, I will no longer be alive. And my request to you, Father: punish the German bloodsuckers. This is the testament of your dying daughter ... A few words about my mother. When you return, do not look for Mother. They shot her ..." she wrote.
At the time, Katya's father was fighting at the front. Her mother was tortured and killed by the Nazis for refusing to reveal his whereabouts. Katya herself was captured and sent to forced labor, where she endured humiliation and beatings and was reduced to fighting with pigs kept by the Germans for scraps of food.
On March 12, 1943, her 15th birthday, Katya wrote the letter before taking her own life in despair.
"I believe the letter will reach," Katya wrote at the end of the letter. She did not know that her father had been captured by the Nazis after being drafted. Nor did she know that her letter would never reach him.
On May 27, 1944, the Soviet newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published this letter, and millions of readers could feel the pain of a child whose family was torn apart by war. Today these lines still deeply move visitors to the museum.
In the museum, visitors trace history step by step, following a chronology through the eyes of Belarusian children: prewar happiness and serenity, the helplessness and fear of the first days of war, heroism and self-sacrifice during the years of resistance, joy and relief after the Great Victory.
Each exhibit and photograph bears quiet witness to the suffering of children in those dark years, a reminder of how dearly peace has been bought.
One exhibition hall in particular was deeply harrowing. Nazis established one of the largest children's concentration camps in Belarus at the time in Krasny Bereg. Children were taken from their parents and forced to give blood for wounded German soldiers. Documents record about 1,990 deaths at the camp.
Sergey Yarets, head of the Zhlobin District Executive Committee of Gomel Region, Belarus, said part of the funds for its construction came from voluntary donations collected during volunteer cleanup days. In a sense, the memorial was built with the contributions of virtually every Belarusian.
"This shows that our country, our generation, takes preservation of historical truth very seriously, so that it reaches our children and grandchildren. For the strength of the state lies in history, in respecting that history, and it cannot be rewritten," Yarets said.
Zhang Wenchuan, the Chinese ambassador to Belarus, who visited the memorial complex, left a note in the museum's guestbook: "We deeply honor the memory of the children who died in the years of war!"
According to statistics, during the Nazi occupation of Belarus, more than 160,000 children were killed, and more than 138,000 were left as orphans. In the years of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, more than 2.2 million children were killed or wounded.
"These terrifying figures serve as a constant reminder that history cannot be forgotten, and that peace must be cherished," said the Chinese ambassador. ■