Remains of 69 Red Army soldiers who died in the autumn of 1943 reburied in mass grave in village of Kalinino, under Tereshkovichi village council, in Gomel Region, having been found in May, by 52nd separate specialised search battalion
During the ceremony
Nikolay Basenkov, a member of the Gomel Association of Defenders of the Memory and Truth about the Great Patriotic War, using historical records, helped locate the burial place. Talking to locals, it became clear that the soldiers had been buried under a tercentennial oak tree. The search battalion and cadets then exhumed the soldiers’ remains, and were able to identify them thanks to the identification tag worn by Red Army soldier Ivan Zakharov, of the 771st Infantry Regiment of the 137th Infantry Division. Born in Klimov, in the Orel Region, in 1907, Ivan was among 69 soldiers of the 179th Medical Battalion who died from injuries in the autumn of 1943.
Representatives of local authorities, veterans and youth organisations joined relatives of the soldiers at the burial ceremony.
By Yulia Lysenko
