Beslan children’s drawings exhibition opens in Berlin

A soldier in fatigues taking a child on his arms out of the school building in Beslan, swept by fire, a boy raising hands as a terrorists points the gun at him.

A display in Berlin that opened Saturday shows these and another 108 drawings of the children who rendered their reflections on the September 2004 tragedy in Beslan’s general school No. 1 in this self-styled genre.

The Beslan Tragedy As Seen By Children is the title of the itinerant exhibition that has been organized at the Center of Russian Science and Culture by a handful of organizations and officials, including the Russian Foreign Ministry’s center for communications with expatriates abroad, the Russian Security Council, both houses of parliament, the United Russia Party, and leaders of a number of regions.

The project has a clear objective of focusing the attention of the general public, media people, and politicians on the problem of terrorism. The drawings were selected in the course of an all-Russia competition How Do I Live In My Country.

The display has one special detail, said Natalya Kazak, the vice-president of a Russian charity foundation. Nobody gave the children a special task of producing anything related to the Beslan topic – they simply responded to the tragedy from the bottom of their hearts.

Visitors note a striking clarity and sincerity of the drawings. Speakers said at the opening ceremony Beslan had become a real nationwide tragedy and gave heartache to the entire world community. On the other hand, it propelled the understanding that the war someone had declared to the whole world lay across every courtyard, every house, and every human heart.

Berlin is the third place where the itinerant exhibition has been taken. It has already been shown in Brussels and Luxembourg, and its next destinations are Dresden and Copenhagen, Itar-Tass reported.