Wednesday, 25th July, 2018 – Vitebsk – 2nd day.

Yesterday we slept in a hotel in Minsk – the “Belarus”. There we visited the UNESCO- recognized war memorial and museum of the “Great Patriotic war”.  It is one of the biggest war museums in the world complete with displays of tanks, planes, weapons large and small, uniforms of all kinds, endless pictures of war heroes,  medals of all kinds, train carriages and tracks, posters of the Soviet  anti-Fascist propaganda campaign,  partisan huts, printing presses. I focused on these last items in the section on partisan warfare against the Germans. When we went in I spoke to one of the ladies in information to request a search for my dad in the data bank and archives.This was a  disappointment as I was told when we left three hours later that they found nothing in the archives about him. On the other hand…