Among the visitors were young actors Artyom and Ilya Myshelov from St. Petersburg, who played prisoners in the film "Blood Type." Directed by Maxim Brius, the film was released this year and is based on real events.
The story of the camp in Vyritsa, Gatchina District, Leningrad Region, is a true tragedy. The film's plot takes viewers back to November 1943. The Nazi occupiers established a so-called "orphanage" in a former pioneer camp in Vyritsa village, Leningrad Region. Prisoners were kept in inhumane conditions, used as blood donors for wounded Nazi soldiers. Hunger, cold, disease, hard labor, punishment, solitary confinement, and executions for disobedience—all of this was the horrific reality of the "orphanage." The exact number of children tortured by the Nazis in the camp is unknown.
Artyom Myshelov played Vanya Savelyev, and Ilya Myshelov played Vanya Afanasyev. Their characters are children who became victims of inhuman cruelty.
Such camps existed not only in Russia. Dozens of similar places were established in Belarus, where children were used as blood donors. In the "Children's Khatyn" camp in Krasny Bereg, several thousand children endured the horrors of violence and death.
The visit of young actors from St. Petersburg to the museum of memorial complex “Khatyn” was a special one. The children, who had experienced the horrific events of war during the film making, were able to see evidence of these crimes on Belarusian land, where civilians, including children, perished en masse during the occupation.
Genocide isn't just dry numbers and death tolls. It's the pain and suffering of people tortured, burned alive, and shot in front of their loved ones, and the cries of mothers whose children were taken from them.
The memory of the innocent victims of war lives on in people's hearts, in museums, films, and the stories of eyewitnesses and descendants. It reminds us that humanity begins with memory, and oblivion is the first step to repeating evil.
Photo from the Myshelov family archive
