Ahead of the Tankers’ Day celebrations, the Stalin Line Historical and Cultural Complex welcomed participants in the international patriotic project “Breakthrough” from the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
Alexander Metla, Executive Director of the complex, shared his experience of organising and staging historical reenactments with them. The visitors learnt about the operation of the tracked and wheeled vehicle fleet, the restoration workshops, the gas-operated shooting simulation system and the armoured train.
Together with representatives of the “Memory of Afghanistan” Charitable Foundation, Stalin Line, the “Soldiers of Victory” club and the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Belarus, as well as Radek Garašta, the visitors from Yamal took part in a commemorative event at the grave of Hero of the Soviet Union Ivan Mirenkov and gave a presentation at the Minsk gymnasium named after him. On Tankers’ Day, they took part in a historical reenactment of a battle from Operation Bagration.
Gennady Vladimirovich Yushkevich, a 96-year-old war veteran, scout and saboteur, and the last surviving member of the “Jack” group, came to meet the visitors from Yamal. Gennady was only 12 when the Great Patriotic War began. His father left for the front, and his mother was executed by the Germans in the autumn of 1941. After a year of hardship under occupation, Yushkevich joined the partisans. Following the liberation of Belarus, he was dropped into East Prussia as part of a ten-man sabotage group to gather intelligence on the enemy. He turned 16 there. Instead of two months, he spent six months behind enemy lines.
In May 1945, he was awarded the Order of Glory, 3rd Class, and several medals.
After Gennady Vladimirovich’s talk, the visitors from Yamal asked the veteran to sign copies they had purchased of “The Last of the Jack Group”, his autobiographical novella.
You can watch his talk here:
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