Natallia Adamovich

I met Natallia in Minsk, when I was working at the Ministry of Culture and she was at the Yakub Kolas Museum. We met and spoke about the legacy of Belarusian writers. At the time, Natallia was in touch with Iryna, the widow of Vasil Bykau; she was among the few people whom Iryna received at home. After I moved to Warsaw, we spoke even more, often about preserving the memory of Ales Adamovich and Andrei Arkhipenka’s projects in Poland. In our last telephone conversation, about a month before her death, Natallia shared news from literary museums and cultural life in Belarus and worried deeply about what was happening in the country. Yet our conversations were always full of optimism: she believed that everything would turn out well and that Belarus would see positive change. In parting she would say: “Hold on there — everything will be all right; we will live to see it.” She hoped to visit the Museum of Free Belarus and spoke of this more than once. Now the sense is especially painful of how many kind words, memories, and expressions of support we did not manage to share.

I have been researching Ales Adamovich’s work for several years and met Natallia in 2024, when the German translation of I Am from the Fiery Village was being prepared and then published as Feuerdörfer: Wehrmachtsverbrechen in Belarus-Zeitzeugen berichten by Aufbau. Thomas Weiler received the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for this translation in the Translation category in March 2025. I wrote the afterword to the edition, and during its preparation Natallia and I often spoke by telephone. In September 2025 she came to Berlin, where we met in person for the first time. She spent a week here; we spoke a great deal about Ales Adamovich’s work, his biography, and his human-rights work. Natallia was a very open, cheerful, fascinating person, and we quickly formed a warm personal bond — one could say we became friends. After she returned to Belarus, we remained in touch and discussed a Berlin conference on Ales Adamovich planned for January 2027, events for his official centenary in September, and plans for an exhibition in 2028. In our last telephone conversation, Natallia was delighted that her German visa had arrived and that she would be able to come. Afterwards we wrote to one another and talked about cats: she sent photos and videos, and when she stayed with us, she grew fond of our two cats. In her final message, she wrote that she wanted to send me one of Adamovich’s stories so that we could think together about what to do with the text. It was our last contact.

Natallia Aleksandrovna helped me with all my ideas: she sent materials, photographs, information, selected quotations from her father, and advised what to emphasise. She supported me not only in work with her father’s legacy. When I had housing difficulties in Minsk, I lived with her for three months, in Adamovich’s room, with his desk, books, and various materials. She also supported my mother, trying to send her 50 rubles each month for food for her cats and dog, knowing of her difficult circumstances and health problems. My mother treated Natallia to homemade preserves, including her favourite raspberry jam and walnuts. Once she told Natallia, “You are like a second mother to him.” Natallia replied: “And he is like a son to me.” She repeatedly said she would be grateful to me all her life for what I had done for the memory of her father. She supported my Taiwan-related projects and encouraged me to record and share my memories of the journey, calling it an important discovery for Belarusians. On 5 September, during a presentation of the audio guide at the Ivan Lutskevich Museum in Vilnius, I called her: Natallia was speaking with the museum’s staff and said she would visit if she had the opportunity. I could call her at any time to share my problems; she told me to call her rather than my mother, so that she would not worry. Natallia wanted me to find work in the field to which I was drawn. We also planned to assemble material for a book and publish it. As a philologist, Natallia always made sure that a text contained neither grammatical errors nor typos.