Description of the attraction
The monument "Girl with an umbrella" on the Mikhailovsky square in Minsk was erected in 2000. This is a monument to young girls and children - victims of the terrible tragedy at the Nemiga metro station.
On May 30, 1999, on the banks of the Svisloch River, festivities took place, dedicated to the last call of schoolchildren. Among the festive events was a concert of the Mango-Mango group. Thousands of high school students took to the streets of the city that day to celebrate the one and only holiday in their lives. Many of the schoolchildren wanted to see a concert of their favorite band. Suddenly the weather deteriorated sharply, and it started pouring rain with heavy hail. Many girls and boys ran to a small and narrow pedestrian crossing at the Nemiga metro station, fleeing from bad weather, where a terrible crush arose, during which 53 people died. More than one and a half hundred people survived in the crush, but received injuries of varying severity.
The whole country in those mournful days dressed in mourning for their daughters and sons who died in a terrible crush.
The tragedy also shocked the talented sculptor of Belarus Vladimir Zhbanov. At that time, he was working on a sculpture of a girl under an umbrella, for which his ten-year-old daughter Masha posed for him. Initially, it was planned to create a sculpture of a girl waiting for a trolleybus at a stop, but the tragedy changed the artist's original intention, significant changes were made to his sculpture.
This is how the saddest and most touching sculpture of Vladimir Zhbanov was created - a barefoot girl in a wet dress with an umbrella torn by hail in her hands. Mikhailovsky Square is a popular recreation place in Minsk. Many have seen a strange sculpture of a girl with a torn umbrella, but few know that this is the sculptor's emotional response to the pain of the citizens of his country.
Even during the life of the sculptor, rumors began to circulate about the unusual properties of his creations. After Zhbanov's death, they began to say that he knew some mystical secret and endowed each of his work with special properties. So, they say that someone who touches a girl with an umbrella will be avoided by accidents.
