Hanna Barysiewicz

Hanna Barysiewicz was born in the village of Buda near Ihumen, to a peasant family of Adam Nowicki and his second wife, Józefa. When she was sixteen months old (four months according to other data), her mother died. Her father remarried. Hanna Barysiewicz was raised by her older stepsister and grandmother. When Hanna Barysiewicz was a child, her family moved to Stary Kojczyn (now Byerazino District). Her father, Adam Nowicki, purchased a piece of land from the owner of the manor. As payment, the Nowicki family worked on the landowner's land. Hanna Barysiewicz did not attend school and could not write or read: During World War I, Hanna Barysiewicz's older half-brother (son of Adam Nowicki from his first marriage) was killed at the front. a member of the Selsoviet. Ipalit Barysiewicz died in 1940. In interviews, Hanna Barysiewicz hardly talked about him, only mentioning that she had forgiven him. She did not remarry. == Longevity record ==

The media became interested in Hanna Barysiewicz in 2004. When the woman exchanged her passport, officials noted the petitioner's age - 115. Initially a mistake was suspected. Prior to the release of the Guinness Book of Records for 2007, the Belarusian side put forward the candidacy of Hanna Barysiewicz as a record holder of longevity, but the Belarusian resident was left out. The reason for this was the doubts of the editors of the publishing house, who did not trust documents published in the former USSR. In 2007, the official longevity record holder was a 114-year-old resident of Japan, while Hanna Barysiewicz was 118 years old at the time. In 2007, Hanna Barysiewicz's name as a longevity record holder was entered in the Book of Records of Russia, CIS and Baltic States "Diwo" (Книгу рекордов России, стран СНГ и Прибалтики "Диво"). == Media presence ==

Hanna Barysiewicz has been the heroine of many interviews and nationally broadcast radio and television programs in several countries since 2004. The media tried to discover the "secret" of her longevity, and were interested in the heroine's health condition, diet, views and attitude to the world. Eye surgery In the spring of 2005, Hanna Barysiewicz was the heroine of a program on Radio Liberty. During the broadcast, issues related to her health were raised. Among other things, it was mentioned that the woman was losing her eyesight. The program did not go unnoticed. Alena Dzianisawa, head of the Belarusian company Alkon, which specializes in the production of ophthalmological devices, became interested in Barysiewicz's case. She made a proposal to study the woman's health and prepare her for eye surgery. The tests showed that the biological age of the 117-year-old Barysiewicz could be estimated at 75 years. The case of the surgery was widely reported in the media as setting a record for operating on the oldest patient in the world. A surgery on the second eye was also planned, but did not take place due to Barysiewicz's death. Until the end of her life, Hanna Barysiewicz retained her mental clarity and good memory. They inquired about her attitude toward the authorities of successive regimes, Lenin, Stalin, Brezhnev. They also asked questions about her attitude toward the Belarusian government of the time. In her answer, the woman highlighted the repetition of history. Of all political activists, she respected Vladimir Lenin the most: She believed that the best period of her life was the Brezhnev era: She was ambivalent about Alexander Lukashenko's presidency and the policies implemented by him. She believed that the district and city authorities were deceiving citizens because they were not meeting their demands. During an interview with the opposition media on her one hundred and seventeenth birthday, referring to the attitude of the authorities toward veterans of the Great Patriotic War, she expressed the view of unequal treatment of war heroes and ordinary citizens: Hanna Barysiewicz was skeptical of the church hierarchy at the end of her life. In interviews, she spoke of the decline of the authority of clerical power: == References ==