Ola Memorial complex

The memorial complex on the site of the village Ola burned by the Germans in Svetlogorskiy district of Gomel region was opened in the spring of 2020.

The name of the village comes from a tributary of the Berezina River Ola, the village was known since 1795. During the Great Patriotic War it suffered the tragic fate of Khatyn.

The village of Ola was occupied at the end of July 1941. In the morning of January 14, 1944 a German punitive detachment together with a military unit, which numbered about 1 thousand soldiers, surrounded the village. People were driven into houses, which were then set on fire. Those who tried to escape were shot with machine guns and automatic rifles and thrown into the fire alive. In this way 1758 civilians, including 950 children, were shot and burned.

After the war, the village of Ola was not revived.

In 1958, a monument — a sculpture of a kneeling soldier with a wreath — was erected on the mass grave, where civilians and Soviet soldiers (a total of 2,253 people) were buried.

The reconstruction of the mass grave resulted in the creation of the Ola memorial complex, which includes three functional zones: an entrance group, a memorial zone (on the territory adjacent to the existing mass grave) and a connecting pedestrian route along the former village street.

In the center of the memorial area is a symbolic cross and bell. Next to it is a belfry in the form of a stylized village barn with the number of bells according to the number of villages whose inhabitants perished here.