Fire in Larysa Heniush’s House

05.02.2005.

According to RFE/RL

A first started in the house where the famous Belarusian poetess Larysa Heniush lived. Neighbors noticed it and managed to smother the fire and through the clothes of the drunk dwellers out of the window.

The house is more than hundred years old. It used to belong to Larysa Heniush’s father in law Yan Heniush. Larysa Heniush lived there two years before World War II and after she returned from GuLAG camps – since 1956 till 1983 when she died. Vasil Bykaw, Maksim Tank, UIadzimir Karatkevich, Mikola Yermalovich, Zianon Pazniak and many other famous people came there to see the poetess.

When she died, the house became the state property and some strangers were settled there. Larysa Heniush’s relative Alena Kaniushewskaya who used to live in the house, said:

-- God knows who these people are and I don’t even want to come there, because it hurts me when I look at this house. Before that these people had a flat in an apartment house, but drank and didn’t pay the taxes. They were evicted and settled to this house. If the fire had taken place at night, everything would have burned: the neighbors barely managed to smother the fire in the bedroom where the floor was burning and threw the burning quilted jacked out of the window. How can such irresponsible people be settled here? You know our authorities: they do what they want.

Five years ago Zelva citizens filed a letter to the executive committee with the request to rename Savetskaya Street to Larysa Heniush Street and open a literary museum in the house where she lived. The executive committee still hasn’t answered.