1941st. They began bonbing Minsk from the first day of the war. Three militiamen had been killed at once after direct hit to the militia office.

Tram-lines had been broken and there were shell-holes on the streets. Crying, weeping, moaning, had been heard everywhere. Militia patrols were the first to come to the places ofaircraft exploding, they put the fires out, saved people and property, assisted the victims, stopped panic. They controlled order on the streets and inside the bomb shelters during the air raids of the enemy.

Many city-dwellers had been lost within the air raids. Militiamen found the children who lost their parents inside the ruined buildings, bomb shelters and looked after them. At night-time special militia groups followed and annihilated the rocketeers of the enemy who directed German airplanes to the most important premises. For several days,from the beginning of the war up to the moment of fascict army entering Minsk(22-28 Iune 1941) these special groups arrested ten fascist spies and saboteurs who had disguised themselves in civiliam clothes and spoke Russian fluently. Zukovsky and Iryakhov, Minsk militiamen, became notable for delaying German spies who were wearing in the uniform of the soviet firemen.

Militiamen also provided partrol service, arranged the ambushes as well as the rounds up and special operations to find out criminals. They controlled the entrance to the city, passport routine, the rulles of black-out. Intensified measures had been taken to guard and protect the property of the State. From 26 Iune there were formed special groups of sixty militiamen to collet the cash in the temporarily abandoned shops during the air raids as well as to find and transfer food and clothes to the possession of the military units.

That time was severe and hard: Minsk was declared a martial law, that's why killers, criminals, maradeurs, violators had been executed by shooting without any judicial envestigation. Minsk militiamen together with the military men and State security personnel provided protection of industrial enterprises, bridges, telefphone and telegraph lines, electric power stations as well as they assisted to evacnate people and material values deep into the State, struggled against deserters, panic-mongers, rumours.

Those days the fortune of Lev Nikolaevich Ginsburg, the cavalry sguadron commander on the protection of Western front Headguarters, took a tragic turn. In the first days of the war at his office he knew of the tragegedy-his family had been lost during the air raid. He remained at his post to the end of eracuation from the city, when advanced detachments of German army entered Minsk. He left the blajing city as a part of the newly formed regiment. He was lucky to survire. he came back to Minsk and worked at Minsk militia for a lo9ng time after the war. Sure, old residents of Minsk remember a famous cavalry sguadron(later-division) which from the end of 40th up to the middle of 50th stood guard over social order during popular arrangements as well as football matches on the Dinamo stadium. They remember also the commander of the sguadron-stocky, brogd-shouldered officer with black moustache-L.N.Ginsburg, the major of militia. Endless stream of citizens left Minsk, escaping from fascists, came to the East. 28 Iune 1941 Headguarters ordered to the sub-units of Minsk militia and Narkomat of Interior Affairs went to Mogilev. Struggee against enemy continued on the Dnepro-river banks.