The Belarusian State Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War is one of the most significant and largest museums on the planet – along with rich collections in Moscow, Kyiv, New Orleans – which tell about the events of Second World War.

The museum was first opened to visitors on October 22, 1944, when the war was still ongoing. It is the largest national repository of artifacts of military history of 1941-1945.

Gathering of the collection began in June 1942. Future exhibits were sent directly from the front to the specially created Republican Commission for the collection of documents and materials of the Second World War, which was in evacuation in Moscow. Among the first values were chronicles of the partisan movement, printings and manuscripts, and improvised weapons. In November 1942, an exhibition was opened in Moscow entitled "Belarus lives, Belarus fights". In 1944 the exhibition was moved to Minsk, where it was opened to the public on October 22 of that year.

In 1966, the museum moved to a special building on the central square of Minsk (now Kastryčnickaja Square). In 1977, a unique exposition of military equipment and weapons on open air started its work near the museum.

Over decades of research of the history of the Second World War, the museum’s collection has grown many times over. In the 21st century, in independent Belarus, it was decided to build a new museum complex. The grand opening of the renovated museum took place on July 2, 2014.

The new museum building is located in a semicircle on a hill near the obelisk named “Minsk - Hero City”. The central facade of the building is made in the form of a symbolic Victory salute, on the rays of which bas-reliefs with ten significant events of the war are presented.

Reconstructions are widely used in the design of the exposition, the task of the reconstructions is to arouse the visitor's sensation of the historical realities. The exposition is equipped with a variety of audio and video tools for demonstrating voices, noises, music, video materials, images of genuine documents and reference materials.

The area of the exhibition halls is 4200 square meters, where more than 8 thousand museum items are represented. The museum funds consist of 30 collections and have more than 150 thousand storage units. Two museum collections “Manuscript magazines” and “Improvised weapons” have the status of the highest historical and cultural value of the country.

Publication date: 17.02.2020.

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