Russia (bbabo.net), - Artists Anastasia and Georgy Begma created a "living picture" about the liberation of Rostov-on-Don in 1943. The main character of the work was a 12-year-old boy Vitya Cherevichkin.

"During the first occupation of Rostov, the Nazis issued a decree on the destruction of domestic pigeons. It was fashionable then to keep a dovecote, many teenagers bred and tamed birds. However, Vitya refused to kill his birds. Several times a day he made his way to them, fed them and let them fly, " - said Anastasia Begma.

According to one version, the boy managed to find out that the German headquarters was located at the Krasny Aksai plant, and he tried to inform the Red Army about this with the help of pigeons.

However, the Nazis managed to notice the birds and grab Vitya Cherevichkin. They beat and shot the child, and a few hours later, Red Army soldiers entered Rostov-on-Don with fighting. A photograph of a murdered child with a dead dove in his hands, taken by war correspondent Max Alpert, became an accusatory document at the Nuremberg trials.

The second German occupation of the Don capital lasted 205 days. Rostov-on-Don was among the ten cities of the USSR that suffered the most destruction during the Great Patriotic War. If in 1941 567 thousand people lived in the city, then by the time of liberation there were only 170 thousand inhabitants. The rest were killed by German punishers, starved to death or driven to concentration camps. Three participants in the liberation of the city live in Rostov-on-Don - Nikolai Polshinsky, Dmitry Belov and Georgy Komissarov.

bbabo.Net