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On 13 December 2025, a group of political prisoners began to be removed from Belarusian penal colonies and prisons as part of agreements with the United States government administration. 123 individuals, out of more than a thousand people convicted under political charges, were deported by the Belarusian KGB and handed over to representatives of Ukraine. The operation was carried out in secrecy: prisoners were blindfolded with balaclavas and bags placed over their heads, and their hands were bound with tape. None of them had been informed about the deportation in advance; many were not returned their passports or personal belongings.
The only possessions they were able to take with them were suitcases with clothes and a meagre “prison kit”: a small stash of tea bags, an aluminium spoon, soap, a rag, and warm underwear. These few objects constituted the prisoner’s entire material world — the limited horizon of comfort and the only point of stability available to them.
Today, these items are displayed in museum showcases. Their function has changed: removed from the cycle of everyday use, they have become witnesses to imprisonment, violence, and survival. Through these artefacts, the exhibition offers a way to look at contemporary Belarusian reality — through objects that carry the memory of traumatic experience and human resilience.
The collection exhibition “Point of Entry — 123” is an attempt to reflect on a historical moment through specific, silent, yet profoundly expressive objects that have become bearers of memory.
📅 The exhibition will be open to visitors from 20 January to 1 March 2026.
The exhibition is part of the Free Belarus Museum’s collection exhibition programme “Point of Entry”, which invites audiences to engage with the contemporary Belarusian context through original artefacts emerging in the country here and now. Each exhibition in the series offers a new point of entry into the experiences shaping Belarus’s contemporary history.
