by Marat Chernyshov
[RedStar] The Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya Museum hosted the closing of the 2023 Memory Watch.
| A lovely project that gives an unlooked for, bittersweet happiness to the families of those they’ve identified. |
Among the guests of honor were the head of the military memorial department of the Department of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for perpetuating the memory of those killed in defense of the Fatherland Igor Mironov, Deputy Minister of Information and Social Communications of the Moscow Region Olga Grebenshchikova, and the head of the All-Russian Public Search Movement of Russia in the Moscow Region Anton Kuznetsov.
As part of the solemn ceremony, the leaders of the search teams summed up the results of the search season and handed over to the relatives the found belongings of the fallen soldiers, the data of which was restored, for safekeeping.
The location of the ceremony was not chosen by chance. This year, on September 13, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who was destined to become a scout, a partisan, the first woman Hero of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War, who gave her life in the fight against fascism, turns 100 years old.
In the Moscow region there are 12 search associations, which include 113 search teams - that’s more than three thousand searchers involved in perpetuating the memory of those who died defending the Fatherland in the region and other regions of the Russian Federation.
Last season, search engines in the Moscow region conducted more than 300 expeditions to the battlefields of the Great Patriotic War, more than 100 of them took place in the Moscow region.
As part of the “Battle for Moscow” project, 10 expeditions were carried out and 50 lessons of courage were organized in cultural and educational institutions of the region, and events were also held on the basis of museum exhibitions created by search engines.
In the Moscow region, the remains of 192 people were found and buried with full honors, and the names of three defenders of the Motherland were established.
Thanks to the work of the Smolensk detachments, two soldiers returned from the fields of the Smolensk region and were buried in their native land near Moscow.
In total, search engines in the Moscow region buried more than eight hundred soldiers on the territory of our country, and established the names of forty-three people.
Thus, search engines from Tatarstan found the remains of 12 soldiers in the territories of the Volgograd, Leningrad, Novgorod, and Tver regions. Only one mortal insert was read. It belonged to a native of the Leningrad region, Nikolai Fedorov, born in 1908 - a Red Army soldier of the 41st separate construction railway battalion. Since July 14, 1941, Nikolai Fedorovich was considered missing.
In the Moscow region, the remains of 192 people were found and buried with full honors, the names of three defenders of the Motherland were established
One of the hero’s grandchildren, Stepan Nikolaev, came to the closing ceremony of the Memory Watch. In a solemn ceremony, he was presented with the personal belongings of his heroically deceased ancestor: household items, the medallion itself and an insert on which the soldier’s handwritten data was preserved.
Stepan Vladimirovich was also awarded the “Stepping into Immortality” medal, which the Red Army soldier was awarded posthumously.
This is not the only story that melted the hearts of everyone present on a frosty day. Relatives of Vladimir Smirnov, a Red Army soldier who was considered missing since 1945, thanks to search teams, received his medal, and with it information about where and how their heroic ancestor died. Until that moment, there was nothing except a photograph and a funeral.
“The search engines returned my grandfather, who had gone missing. I cried for days when I found out they found him. Many thanks to them, low bow. These caring people are doing a very big and important job,” shared Vladimir’s granddaughter Svetlana Belyakova.
There is active interaction with countries that were once part of the USSR. A search party found the remains of a Kazakh soldier from the 144th Infantry Division of the Red Army, Seylan Mametov, in the Ruza area. Thanks to the Echo of War detachment, he was returned to his homeland.
The difficult and important work of the search engines was noted by the head of the military memorial department of the Department of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for perpetuating the memory of those who died defending the Fatherland, Igor Mironov. He emphasized that the authorities are closely cooperating with search teams in the region, especially in the Moscow region.
“The Moscow region is one of the regions that actively participated in the Great Patriotic War; there are many dead here, whose remains have yet to be raised, reburied with honors and immortalized in memorials, documents and information systems,” noted Igor Mironov.
After a minute of silence, participants in the closing of the Memory Watch laid flowers and wreaths at the place where partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya died heroically.
The search season has ended, but this is not a reason to sit idly by. The work of detachment museums, lessons of courage and history in educational institutions, preserving the memory of the feat of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers - all this is in the plans of those who preserve our history and memory with their own hands, of people with big hearts - search engines.
| Well said and well done. |