Post-War Brest

The Citadel of the Brest Fortress, Spring — Summer, 1945. The deserted, rough silence. Windows embrasures of the ruined military barracks look at visitors. It seemed that these ruins were guarding the peace of those who had been taken by the war. The bullet and shell-riddled Three-Arched Gate were still there. They were the landmark of the obstinacy of the Fortress defenders. The burnt-down White Palace was still soaring. But the military barracks from the Three-Arched Gates to the Brigit Gates were gone. Soon the Three-Arched Gates and the White Palace also vanished. In February 1946, they did not exist. An eye-witness of those events, a Soviet army officer, driving us, schoolchildren, to the Fortress to a sponsor concert in honour of the Soviet Army Day narrated that the bricks from the demolished White Palace had been used for the repairs of military barracks where the Red Army soldiers had been stationed. In his words, the Three-Arched Gates were pulled down because they impeded the movement of military vehicles.

.

The centre of Brest, destroyed after Soviet aviation raids in July. In 1944, mainly residential buildings and the urban population were hard hit by the dropped bombs.
The intersection of Bratskij Lane with Sovetskaya Street.
The intersection of Mitskevicha and Komsomolskaya Streets during the early years after the liberation. On the right side of the picture there is one of the two still-standing mansions which were owned by the land-lordly family of the Yagmins. Nowadays, restored and well-kept old houses with colonnades form the quarter between Karl Marx and Komsomolskaya Streets.
Pushkinskaya Street, the intersection with Sovetskaya Street. The burned down house of the Skorbnik family. The rebuilt house occupies a well-deserved place among the most interesting city buildings.
Brest Drama Theater, 1944. It has been restored and reconstructed.
Brest, October 1944. A military mobile film projector device is demonstrating the American film “The Big Waltz” in the building of the former synagogue. In 1945–1946, there were three cinema houses in Brest: the “1-go Maya” cinema (the former “Adria” on Sovetskaya Street), the “Smena” cinema (the former Evangelical Church on Karl Marx Street), and the “Named after Gorky” cinema (the former cinema of Sarvera on Sverdlova Street). The hall of the synagogue was spacious. There was a stage and curtains, and both local and touring performances were shown there. Various solemn assemblies, meetings of the pioneer druzhinas and Komsomol members of the city, performances of professional and amateur actors were also held in the building. Later on the cinema “Belarus” was opened in the former synagogue building.
The Fortress Citadel, the spring of 1945. There is a damaged bridge over the Mukhavets branch, which led to the Three-Arched Gate on the picture. The church is visible to the right of the gate, the Terespol Gates are further right. The assembled weapons lie in front of them. An abandoned German armored fighting vehicle is on the curb on the bottom right.
Pushkinskaya Street. The quarter between K.Marx and Komsomolskaya Streets.
A view over Gogolya Street, the part of the present Kosmonavtov Boulevard to Sovetskaya Street. 1944–1945.
A city mill, 1945–1946. The corner of Moskovskaya (now Masherova Avenue) and Lenina Streets (Kosmonavtov Boulevard). Nowadays, the bookstore “Druzhba” (Friendship) is located at this site.
January 1946. The last religious procession an Epiphany Day from the Brotherhood Church along Sovetskaya Street to the Mukhavets River. By that time the bell-ringing had been banned.
The autumn of 1949. 17-go Sentyabrya Street (now Lenina Street). The picture depicts the funeral of the Lieutenant Naganov and other Red Army fighters, whose remains were found in the Fortress by the Terespol Gate.
“Artillery men, Stalin gave an order…” At the top of one of the ramparts of Fort No. IX there were two vertically sited ancient cannons. We would throw a small-caliber shell with flaming tracer into the barrel of the cast-iron cannon and the cannon fired. The ammunition for firing was procured at the railways, where we found a captured 20-mm antiaircraft gun mounted on the platform. It came to Brest from Potsdam together with the carriage full of shells, and crisscrossed between Brest-Polessky and Brest-Vostochny stations for a long time without any guard. In a couple of months Brest kids emptied the carriage with ammunition. None of us ever even thought about deadly risks of these raids. After the demolition of the Fort No. IX, old fortress cannons were removed from the ground. Now they adorn the exposition of the City Local History Museum.
The Fort No. X. The smallest and the most distant of our forts, the site for skiing. It was completely demolished. Fragments of a bypass ditch, visible from Y. Kupaly Street, laid nearby, have remained.
Translated from Russian by Leo Levine and Sofia Levine