Introduction

We invite you to get acquainted with the memorial objects reflecting the events of the most tragic period in the history of the Jewish community of Mogilev of the twentieth century - the Holocaust.

Why do we still care about this topic? If we can understand how a situation was created in which the laws of common sense, humanism and good neighbourliness ceased to work, perhaps we can prevent the repetition of national catastrophes in the present and future.

The History of the Holocaust did not end with the murder of thousands of Jews, Roma, and people with disabilities - the memory of the events and attitudes towards them also underwent various transformations. The conflicts and dilemmas involved ordinary German soldiers, SS men, Einsatzgruppen, local collaborators, resistance members and citizens. And now the suppression and falsification in the descriptions of massacres and robbery are used to form various ideological "concepts" about the period of occupation.

Although the events mentioned took place more than 80 years ago, it remains unclear whether the installation of monuments is a private or public matter? Why do the epitaphs on the monuments not reflect the true events? Why do modest obelisks evoke strong feelings among descendants of murdered Jews and neo-Nazis alike, but indifference among ordinary citizens?

We propose to reflect on this with a virtual tour around the city of Mogilev and its surroundings, visiting important places of remembrance.

This tour was developed by a group of experts from Mogilev, students from the European Humanities University and Osnabrück University as part of the workshop "Mapping the Co-presence of Violence and Memory in Belarus" in March 2024.