Maly Trostenets is a village, ten kilometers from Minsk.
At the school that Maxim Sarychev attended in Minsk, it was never said that Maly Trostenets, the fourth (according to some sources, the third) concentration camp in terms of the number of people killed in it after Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek, and the largest in the former Soviet Union. According to various estimates from 200 to 250 thousand people were killed there
After the war, the Soviet government took little interest in this camp - it had no meaning for them. For this reason, the land on the territory of the former concentration camp was converted into a landfill to forget this story.
The memorial stone was installed here only in 2002. Since 2010, work has been underway to create a memorial complex. Its construction was supported by Germany, including the German foreign Ministry, individuals and city administrations, from where Jews were brought to the death camp near Minsk.
Maxim Sarychev explores the oblivion and invisibility of history on the part of the government surrounding Maly Trostenets.
He seeks to start a conversation about the past, provoking empathy through personal attitude, knowledge, and imagination. This project does not involve a detailed reconstruction of historical events, but gives the viewer space for reflection and personal experience in dealing with trauma. The exhibition raises questions about humanity, the problem of preserving memory, extreme manifestations, the mechanics of violence, and our role in these processes.
Work on the project was carried out during 2017-2019 in Belarus, Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany.
The exhibition includes photos and videos taken at the Maly Trostnets memorial in 2017-2019, photos from research trips to Berlin, Prague and Vienna, materials from archives, and a series of luminographic works based on archaeological materials.
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