Today at the Northern gate of the Kobrin fortification Brest Fortress Thousands of people gathered - Brest residents, guests of the city, to see a large-scale military-historical reconstruction “June 22. Brest Fortress". There were three times more reenactors than last year. Clubs and reenactors arrived from Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Japan, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, France, Great Britain, Kazakhstan, China, Japan. This increase is explained by the fact that this year June 22 falls on a day off.
The reconstruction consisted of two parts: a peaceful day and an episode of the battle. A little over an hour in time.
The audience saw the feat of corporal Vasily Volokitin, the attack of Samvel Matevosyan, the capture of Major Pyotr Gavrilov and the families of commanders. They also showed a "human shield" - the Germans broke through to the island, hiding behind women and children.
The reenactors used weapons provided by Belarusfilm, pyrotechnics and a 45 mm anti-tank gun.
Reconstruction in the fortress took place for the ninth time.
What attracts reenactors on June 22 in Brest? Chairman of the Council of the public association "Military-Historical Club Garrison" Yuri Kireev believes that it is important for reenactors to live in a tent camp according to military regulations:
- Preparation takes several months. We accept applications and conduct a rigorous selection process. We have the Red Army, and the Wehrmacht, and civilians. Today, for the first time, about 70 people are participating in the reconstruction, the rest are familiar with each other, they have come more than once. In order to live that era for several days, people travel hundreds of kilometers. We will be glad if the young people who came to the Brest Fortress today become interested in history - they read books, watch films to form a picture.
Brest resident Alexander Zharkov, military-historical club "Rubezh", participates in the reconstruction for the ninth time:
- On June 22 you will not rewrite. But we try to present the details in different ways. And this allows you to relive the events of that fateful morning again and again. We get used to the role and every time we experience this tragedy. Without living history, it is difficult for the current generation to show and tell how it was. Without these explosions, without these hordes of Germans, without the screams of the wounded, without those who surrendered, without women and children, whom the men had to send to surrender, it is not easy for young people to imagine the tragedy. For the sake of this we are here today - we are experiencing, leaving a piece of the soul. For everyone to remember. So that the tragedy does not happen again in our land.
"The last peaceful day". This is the name of the reconstruction carried out in Brest in memory of the victims of the Second World War. Three million residents of Belarus, or, in other words, every third did not return home. It would seem that we know almost everything about the Second World War, however, even on the day of the 76th anniversary of the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR, there are more questions than answers.
Almost two years after the start of World War II, on June 22, 1941, the war came to the USSR. Soviet historiography called the next four years the Great Patriotic War.
In Brest, the beginning of the war has been remembered for more than a year with the help of such military historical reconstructions . The event was called "The Last Day of the World".
As is known from chronicles and documents, the history of Brest in World War II did not begin with the defense of the Brest Fortress. Residents of a modern city are unlikely to see the reconstruction of a joint Soviet-German parade, which took place on September 22, 1939, after the invasion of Nazi troops into Poland.
“Compatriots from Brest, organize a reconstruction of how the NKVD officers, the prison guards, fled on June 22. Organize the reconstruction of the deportations, which were carried out by the future defenders, the fighters of the NKVD escort regiment, which was stationed in the fortress,” Andrey Dynko, editor-in-chief of the Nasha Niva publication, comments on such reconstructions.
He calls this approach to history "half-truths to order." For Western Belarusians, the war started earlier.
“The first dead were precisely from September 1, 1939. And then until 1941, you know, many were taken prisoner. And these guys, from the western territories, waited until 1941. Then their fate developed in different ways,” notes historian Kuzma Kozak.
But what were the first days after the attack of the Third Reich on the USSR? Many historians agree that the Soviet army was not ready, and Stalin successively denied the possibility of an attack. Archival reports of military leaders of that time were published today for the first time by the Ministry of Defense of Russia.
“Even on the night of June 22, I personally received an order from the Chief of Staff of the Klenov Front in a very categorical form - by dawn on June 22, withdraw the troops from the border, withdraw them from the trenches, which I categorically refused to do and the troops remained in positions. In general, there was a lot of nervousness, inconsistency, ambiguity, fear of “provoking” a war”, - this is how he described the events of those days lieutenant general Peter Sobennikov.
Many questions remain about Joseph Stalin's method of waging war. The human losses of the USSR, winning country, amounted to almost 42 million military and civilians. The victims of Nazi Germany - 12 million.
At the same time, in modern Russia, the legal successor of the Soviet Union, Stalin's military policy is criticized less and less. 20 years ago, a third of Russians surveyed attributed the colossal number of victims to cruelty generalissimo. In 2017, there were 12% of such people. For Belarus, the Second World War means the loss of three million people, every third inhabitant.
Kuzma Kozak assesses the significance of the war:
“It is destructive, it is disgusting, and using the example of a disgusting war, you can still build and educational programs, and show people that war is a disaster."
The only question is, should the memory of a devastating war go hand in hand with the praise of militarism?
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When shells explode before your eyes, a machine gun beats in agony, and clouds of gray smoke do not let the sun's rays through, you realize how scary it is in war. But this is just a reconstruction of the tragic event of June 1941 - the treacherous attack on the USSR by fascist Germany.
And although you understand that the mines are inert, the cartridges are blank, and the blood on the soldier's tunics is fake, this does not make you feel more comfortable ...
It should be reminded that more than 500 reenactors from Belarus, Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Japan, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Spain, China and Kazakhstan took part in the reconstruction on June 21-22. For the first time clubs of reenactors from the Czech Republic and Slovakia joined the forum.
A bit of history (from Wikipedia)
June 22 at 3:15(04:15 Soviet “decree” time) a hurricane of artillery fire was opened on the fortress, taking the garrison by surprise. As a result, warehouses were destroyed, the water supply was damaged (according to the surviving defenders, there was no water in the water supply two days before the assault), communications were interrupted, and serious damage was done to the garrison.
At 3:23 the assault began. Up to one and a half thousand infantry from three battalions of the 45th Infantry Division advanced directly on the fortress. The surprise of the attack led to the fact that the garrison could not provide a single coordinated resistance and was divided into several separate centers.
The assault detachment of the Germans, advancing through the Terespol fortification, initially did not meet serious resistance and, having passed
The citadel, advanced groups went to the Kobrin fortification. However, the units of the garrison that found themselves in the rear of the Germans launched a counterattack, dismembering and almost completely destroying the attackers.
The Germans in the Citadel were able to gain a foothold only in certain areas, including the club building dominating the fortress (the former Church of St. Nicholas), a dining room commanders and a section of the barracks at the Brest Gates. They met strong resistance in Volyn and, especially, in Kobrin fortification, where it came to bayonet attacks.
By 7:00 June 22 The 42nd and 6th rifle divisions left the fortress and the city of Brest, but many soldiers of these divisions did not manage to get out of the fortress. It was they who continued to fight in it. According to the historian R. Aliyev, about 8 thousand people left the fortress, and about 5 thousand remained in it.
According to other sources, on June 22, there were only 3 to 4 thousand people in the fortress, since part of the personnel of both divisions was outside the fortress - in summer camps, at exercises, at the construction of the Brest fortified area (sapper battalions, an engineering regiment, one battalion each from each rifle regiment and by division from artillery regiments).
By 9 o'clock morning the fortress was surrounded. During the day, the Germans were forced to bring into battle the reserve of the 45th Infantry Division (135pp / 2), as well as the 130th Infantry Regiment, which was originally the reserve of the corps, thus bringing the group of attackers to two regiments.
On the night of June 23, withdrawing troops to the outer ramparts of the fortress, the Germans began shelling, in between offering the garrison to surrender. Surrendered about 1900 people. Nevertheless, on June 23, the remaining defenders of the fortress managed, having driven the Germans out of the section of the ring barracks adjacent to the Brest Gate, to unite the two most powerful pockets of resistance remaining on the Citadel - the battle group of the 455th rifle regiment, led by Lieutenant A. A. Vinogradov (chief chemical services of the 455th rifle regiment) and captain I.N. Zubachev (deputy commander of the 44th rifle regiment for the economic part), and the battle group of the so-called "House of Officers" - the units concentrated here for the planned breakthrough attempt, were led by regimental commissar E M. Fomin (military commissar of the 84th rifle regiment), senior lieutenant N. F. Shcherbakov (assistant chief of staff of the 33rd separate engineering regiment) and lieutenant A. K. Shugurov (executive secretary of the Komsomol bureau of the 75th separate reconnaissance battalion ).
By the evening of June 24 the Germans captured most of the fortress, with the exception of the section of the ring barracks (“House of Officers”) near the Brest (Three-arch) gates of the Citadel, casemates in an earthen rampart on the opposite bank of the Mukhavets (“Point 145”) and the so-called “Eastern Fort” located on the Kobrin fortification - its defense, which consisted of 600 soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, was commanded by Major P. M. Gavrilov (commander of the 44th Infantry Regiment).
Groups of fighters under the command of Senior Lieutenant A.E. Potapov (in the cellars of the barracks of the 333rd Rifle Regiment) and border guards of the 9th Frontier Outpost Lieutenant A.M. Kizhevatov (in the building of the frontier outpost) continued to fight in the Terespol Gate area. On this day, the Germans managed to capture 570 defenders of the fortress.
The last 450 defenders of the Citadel were captured on June 26 after blowing up several compartments of the ring barracks "House of Officers" and point 145, and on June 29, after the Germans dropped an aerial bomb weighing 1800 kilograms, the Eastern Fort fell.
However, the Germans managed to finally clean it up. only June 30th. Only isolated centers of resistance and single fighters remained, gathering in groups and organizing active resistance, or trying to break out of the fortress and go to the partisans in Belovezhskaya Pushcha (many succeeded).
In the cellars of the barracks of the 333rd regiment near the Terespol Gates, the group of A.E. Potapov and the border guards of A.M. Kizhevatov who joined it continued to fight until June 29.
June 29 they made a desperate attempt to break through to the south, towards the Western Island, in order to then turn to the east, during which most of its participants died or were captured. Major P. M. Gavrilov was captured wounded among the last - July 23.
One of the inscriptions in the fortress reads: “I am dying, but I do not give up! Farewell, Motherland. 20/VII-41".
The resistance of single Soviet soldiers in the casemates of the fortress continued until August 1941, before A. Hitler and B. Mussolini visited the fortress. It is also known that the stone that A. Hitler took from the ruins of the bridge was discovered in his office after the end of the war. To eliminate the last pockets of resistance, the German high command gave the order to flood the cellars of the fortress with water from the Western Bug River.
German troops about 3 thousand Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner in the fortress(according to the report of the commander of the 45th division, Lieutenant-General Shliper, on June 30, 25 officers, 2877 junior commanders and soldiers were taken prisoner), 1877 Soviet soldiers died in the fortress.
The total losses of the Germans in the Brest Fortress amounted to 1197 people, of which 87 Wehrmacht officers on Eastern Front during the first week of the war.
June 22, on the Day of National Remembrance of the Victims of the Great Patriotic War, in Brest will be held commemorative events. They will start on the evening of June 21st. A march of reenactors, a peaceful evening on Sovetskaya Street, documentary exhibitions... On June 22 at 3.15 a meeting-requiem will begin on the Square of Ceremonials in the Brest Fortress, Vecherniy Brest reports.
Upon its completion, on the territory of the Kobrin fortification, military-historical reconstruction"22nd of June. Brest Fortress". Beginning - at 4 hours 30 minutes. About 600 people will take part in the reconstruction of the defense of the Brest Fortress. True, expected" German spy"- the AN-2 aircraft of the Brest flying club DOSAAF may never appear in the sky.
Recall that the reconstruction of the beginning of the war in the Brest Fortress has been carried out since 2010. It gathers tens of thousands of spectators, despite the early hour. In 2019, 600 reenactors applied for participation. Enthusiasts of military battles from such countries as Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltic States, Austria, Great Britain, France, and Japan will arrive in Brest. Many military-historical clubs and individuals come not for the first time. The Russians are especially active. Most often, the list includes such cities as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Novosibirsk, Voronezh.
"German plane" and ... drones
Great attention to safety. A lot of pyrotechnics will be laid on the Kobrin fortification. But most of all the organizers fear... unmanned aerial vehicles (drones). It was originally planned that the AN-2 aircraft of the Brest flying club DOSAAF would circle in the air. As planned, he was supposed to play the role of a German intelligence officer.
True, the use of the aircraft in the reconstruction of 2016 caused some controversy. Everyone is well aware of the massive artillery fire arranged by the Nazis in the early morning of June 22. But the scriptwriters assure that nothing is being done for the sake of a beautiful entourage.
Aviation was used to bomb the Eastern Fort, the Garrison VIC explained. - True, it was not on the first day of the war. According to the current idea, the aircraft used is a German reconnaissance aircraft. Those often appeared at our borders before the war.
True, as it became known on the morning of June 19, permission to use the aircraft has not yet been received. So whether it will appear in the sky above the Kobrin fortification this year is a big question.
