From May 14 to 20, volunteer detachments of the BRSM (Belarusian Republican Youth Union) of the Vitebsk region carried out an aid campaign for veterans of the Great Patriotic War and lonely elderly people in all regions.

From May 14 to 20, volunteer detachments of the BRSM of the Vitebsk region carried out an aid campaign for veterans of the Great Patriotic War and lonely elderly people in all regions.

A volunteer detachment from the agricultural college of the educational institution "VSAVM" travelled to the agro-town of Olgovo to help dig a household plot and tidy up the area around the house for Nikolai Sergeevich Ivanov, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, who turned 91 this year.

The war found him as a 12-year-old boy, but tested him like an adult: a partisan detachment, a year in concentration camps (in Vitebsk, then in Lithuania).

– My comrade and I managed to escape from the camp, otherwise I would not have returned home alive, – recalls Nikolai Sergeevich.

During the crossing of the front line, he was shell-shocked and remained unconscious for five days. "But I survived," – said the veteran with a tremor in his voice.

In the post-war period, Nikolai Sergeevich dedicated his life to medicine, fighting not on the front lines, but against diseases. For the last 20 years before his retirement, he worked as a radiologist at a tuberculosis dispensary. Incidentally, the fate of many in his family is connected with medicine. His wife Zinaida, with whom they have been together for 50 years, worked as a paramedic, and his sister was an Honoured Ophthalmologist of the Russian Federation.

Despite his considerable age, Grandpa Kolya (as his wife affectionately calls him) keeps his household in perfect order: the yard has a potato patch, an orchard of apple and pear trees planted with his own hands, and even his own pond, which his father dug many years ago and stocked with fish.

Nikolai Sergeevich expressed his gratitude to the volunteers who worked on the plot for several hours:

– So many young people came today! It is pleasant, of course, and I am immensely grateful to them.

Konstantin Shevyakov, the First Secretary of the Vitebsk Regional Committee of the BRSM, who is overseeing the volunteer detachment, shared his impressions of the time spent in Olgovo:

– I am glad that there is an opportunity to help people, thanks to whom we live today. I wish our veterans many more years of life!