Mitsva Association continues to present rare archive documents to Kazakhstanis. On October 14th, a Republican Exhibition "Evacuation to Kazakhstan in 1941-43" took place in the Oblast history museum. Kokshetau has become the sixth city to host this unique exhibition. At the opening ceremony, Chairpersons and members of national cultural centers of Akmolinsk Oblast, Directors of city and oblast archives, members of Peoples Assembly of Kazakhstan, war veterans, teachers and students of higher educational institutions, and representatives of mass media were present.

The exhibition in Kokshetau was organized by the Jewish National-cultural center Khatikava in cooperation with the Oblast History Museum under the guidance of the Peoples Assembly of Kazakhstan. The exhibits present information about the difficult time period at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War when hundreds thousands of people were evacuated or came as refugees to Kazakhstan to save themselves from German-fascist invaders. The exhibition is unique because this war period is not studied well. The hard work which had been done by the exhibition organizers drew attention of Kazakhstani citizens to the difficult historic period. The organizer and mastermind of this work Alexander Baron said at the opening ceremony: "The exhibition is held before the opening of Peoples Assembly of Kazakhstan session. Our President often speaks about tolerance. At those years, people showed tolerance and it should not be just talked about, our young people should follow this example. That’s why we have organized this exhibition."

The guests were introduced to 80 copies of archive documents related to the period of 60 years ago and demonstrating how difficult and tragic the beginning of the Great Patriotic War was. Guests were shown documents about evacuation of plants, factories, organizations, agencies, and civilians. Just in Akmola Oblast, over 68,000 citizens of different ethnical origins including 15,000 children came there. One of the speakers Alexander Polozhentsev, Director of Oblast Archive, said: "They were met as close friends and relatives because people knew what difficulties they had gone through. Our countrymen shared food, cloths, and spent free time together with evacuated. In our city, evacuated young people created a team "Milk" while the local guys called their team "Kumys" and they always played football together."

It was quite difficult to prepare exhibits. All originals are stored in different archives and some of them are not readable. Thanks to the great work done by specialists, it became possible to present renovated documents. Sholpan Kunanbayeva, Teacher at the History Department of Kokshetau University, noted: "What we see at this exhibition is a rare chance for historians to learn about unique archive documents. That’s why I would like to express my great gratitude to the organizers of the event."

The exhibition drew a lot of attention and interest of Akmola Oblast citizens. The moving exhibition is planned to be held in all large cities of Kazakhstan.

Anatoliy Itkin