Zelva authorities tore down a memorial tablet of Larysa Heniyush

The memorial tablet was established in honor of 100-th anniversary of a famous Belarusian poetess.

The memorial tablet was removed from the building where Larysa Heniyush lived, after it was viewed by an official of district executive committee Yuri Kulikou, who is responsible for ideology. It was told by the present owner of the house to “Radio Svaboda”.

According to the words of Kulikou, authorities are going to “perform a legal evaluation” of unauthorized installation of the memorial tablet. It is unknown where the tablet is now.

Larysa Heniyush was born on 9th of August, 1910 in Vawkavysk district of Hrodna (Grodno) region. After finishing of Vawkavysk gymnasium she lived with her husband-emigrant in Prague, where she worked as a secretary of Vasil Zaharka, president of Belarusian Democratic Republic in emigration.

Heniyush was occupied with preserving and ranking of the presidential archive, she supported Belarusian emigrants, political refugees and prisoners of war. In 1942, in Prague, she published her first book “Ad rodnih niu”(“Ot rodnih niv”).

On March, 5, 1948, being a citizen of Czechoslovakia, Heniyush was arrested, and in 1949, in Minsk, she was sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment as a person without citizenship. She was serving her sentence in prison camps of Komi and Mordovia. In 1956 she was released ahead of time, but she is still not rehabilitated till now. She moved to live in the home country of her husband — Zelva, where in practice she was under house arrest, having even no possibility to see her only son who lived in Belastok (Poland). To the end of her life- she died on April, 7, 1983 — the poetess did not acquire Soviet citizenship.

Belarusian authorities have not rehabilitated the poetess till now.