“Children and war. No statute of limitations” – a large-scale patriotic project was launched in Omsk on the eve of Victory Day | Latest News from Omsk and Omsk region

The project is dedicated to the military and labor exploits of children during the Great Patriotic War.

A conference dedicated to the project “Children and War. No statute of limitations.” According to well-known statistics, the Great Patriotic War claimed about 27 million lives of citizens of the Soviet Union, of which about 10 million were soldiers, the rest were old people, women and children. But statistics are silent about exactly how many children died during the war.

As part of the federal project “Without a Statute of Limitations”, in order to counter attempts to falsify the history of the Great Patriotic War, the Immortal Regiment of Russia, the Russian Military Historical Society, together with the Federal Security Service of Russia for the Omsk Region, with the support of the Government of the Omsk Region, initiated the project “Children and War. Without a statute of limitations,” dedicated to the collection and discussion of information about the combat and labor feats of children and the fate of children during the war. The Republic of Belarus and the Lugansk People’s Republic joined the project.

In his welcoming speech, Deputy Minister of Internal Policy of the Omsk Region Andrei Ignatchik emphasized that the topic of the project is indeed very important and relevant. “Childhood crippled by war, suffering, hunger, death made the children adults early, instilling in them childlike fortitude, courage, the ability to self-sacrifice, to feat in the name of the Motherland, in the name of Victory. Children fought along with adults both in the active army and in partisan detachments. We worked in the rear. Their childhood ended when the war began,” said Andrei Ignatchik.

At the conference, the official representative of the Federal Security Service of Russia for the Omsk Region, Irina Rusnak, in her report spoke about child victims of fascism in the temporarily occupied territories of the USSR, about child prisoners of concentration camps, and also presented documents (interrogations) that for a long time were classified as “secret” in archive of the regional administration.

The labor feat of Omsk residents, whose memories are collected in the book “We brought this day closer as best we could…”, was told by its author Irina Gladkova, Candidate of Philosophy, Head of the Department of Public Relations and Editorial and Publishing Activities of the Library named after. A. S. Pushkin. Each performance was dedicated to the fate of children during the Great Patriotic War. And it is important that the key speeches, along with such serious reports, were children’s research.

The results of the discussion platform were summed up by the moderators of the meeting, as noted by the head of the executive committee of the Immortal Regiment of Russia for the Omsk Region, Anastasia Erakhtina:

“Before the war, these were the most ordinary boys and girls. We studied and helped our elders. The hour has come – they showed how huge a small child’s heart can become when sacred love for the Motherland flares up in it!”

Candidate of Historical Sciences, executive director of the Omsk branch of the Russian Military Historical Society, head of the Omsk historical park “Russia is my history” Olga Bezrodnaya, in turn, emphasized that there is nothing more incompatible than children and war.

“But, unfortunately, our world is structured differently, and again there are explosions, again tragedy. These are the days when the memory of the Great Patriotic War is very important to us. It is in these days that we will remember how the Russian soldier brought liberation to the world. Now we stand in defense of peace and truth. This conference today is also so that we receive the facts and have the words, arguments and courage to stand up for the truth,” she noted.

As part of the conference, a ceremonial awarding ceremony took place for the winners of the competition of children’s research projects and creative works “Children and War. No statute of limitations.” The competition received 69 applications from 32 districts of the Omsk region and from Omsk itself, and the dialogue platform brought together 450 participants.

The winners of the competition in the category were:

Nomination: “Children about children”:

• Alekseev Nikita AlekseevichBOU “Repinskaya Secondary School” of the Kalachinsky municipal district of the Omsk region.
• Devonkovskaya Ksenia AndreevnaMBOU “Irtysh secondary school of the Omsk municipal district of the Omsk region.”
• Marchenko Anastasia DmitrievnaMunicipal Educational Institution “Ulyanovsk Secondary School of the Omsk Municipal District of the Omsk Region.”

Nomination: “From the history of the family to the history of the country”:

• Metelishchenko Anastasia Alexandrovnaa 4th grade student at the Omsk secondary educational institution “Secondary school No. 56 with in-depth study of individual subjects.”
• Lobanova Tatyana Dmitrievna11th grade student of the MBOU “Novoomsk Secondary School of the Omsk Municipal District of the Omsk Region.”
• Kupreikin Nikita Timofeevich7th grade student of the Uralinsk Basic Secondary School, Bolsheukovsky municipal district, Omsk region.
• Josanu Stepan Alexandrovich, 8th grade student of the Omsk educational institution “Gymnasium No. 123 named after. O. I. Okhrimenko”