A monument to the Soviet women's partisan detachment "Motherland" will be unveiled in Thiel on September 27

A monument to the Soviet women's partisan unit "Motherland" will be unveiled in the city of Tille in northeastern France on September 27.

The monument is a joint work of Russian and Belarusian sculptors and consists of two statues of female members of the partisan detachment.

French historian Rene Barki spent more than 13 years researching the history of the Rodina detachment and contributed to perpetuating the memory of its participants.

PARIS, September 9 - RIA Novosti. A monument to the Soviet women's partisan detachment "Motherland" will be unveiled in the city of Tille in northeastern France on September 27, French historian and researcher of the history of this detachment, Rene Barki, told RIA Novosti.

“The opening ceremony of the monument will take place on September 27 in Thiel,” Barki said.

The monument, according to the historian, is a joint work of Russian and Belarusian sculptors and consists of two statues of female members of the partisan detachment. The author of the Russian statue is sculptor Vladimir Surovtsev.

The event is expected to be attended by representatives of the Russian and Belarusian embassies in France, as well as descendants of members of the Rodina detachment.

“The discovery of this monument is of paramount importance for preserving memory,” says the historian. As the agency's interlocutor noted, the monument should remind of the fate of Soviet prisoners of war, as well as the contribution of the women of the Rodina detachment.

Barki began researching the history of the Soviet women's partisan unit Rodina more than 13 years ago after accidentally discovering a book about Soviet women who fought in France. The historian saw familiar names in it - Hérouville and his native Thiel, where during the war women worked in the mines.

Then he contacted the Thiel mayor's office and offered to restore the story of the Rodina detachment, about which the city knew practically nothing. After this, the historian got to work: translated the book from Russian into French and handed it over to the then mayor of Til, found one of the surviving participants - Alexandra Paramonova in Novocherkassk, relatives of other women from the detachment in Russia and Belarus, studied their personal archives, as well as French military documents.

“My father was a miner in Thiel and once told me: “You see, son, there were Soviet prisoners there - men and women. We had never seen women in a mine in France\"... I decided that we would restore this history and fill this blank page," Barki recalls.

Many years of work to restore the history of the Rodina participants eventually led to the idea of ​​perpetuating their memory in Thiel.