Penza, 9 May 2015. PenzaNews. An open-air concert dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory was held on the square by the regional Philarmonic Hall and “Penza” cinema and concert hall on Saturday, May 9.

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The bands and soloists of “Penzaconcert” are performing wartime songs.

The audience already enjoyed the performances of the Gubernatorial Symphonic Orchestra led by the renowned culture artists Vladimir Kashirsky; as well as Roman Nikolaev, Anatoly Khrustalev, Anatoly Lukonin, Irken Mustafin, Gulsina Rafekova, and Elena Safonova.

The people enjoyed such songs as “Dorogi,” “Proschaniye Slavyanki,” “Na Bezymyannoy Vysote,” “Siniy Platochek,” and more.

The square also hosts a hand-made crafts fair, and two car-housed book fares of the regional children and youth library and the Lermontov library.

The first book fair is dedicated to children’s books on the war, both the stories and the encyclopedias.

The second fair can be likened to an outdoors wartime book museum, and includes the books published in the Soviet Union during the wartime which the visitors can pick up, look through and read.

Moreover, the fair holds both story books and field instruction books such as the 1942 “Partisan’s Companion.”

The expo also had several issues of “Stalinskoye Znamya” newspaper, a photo album “We will revenge” released in Penza in 1943, wartime issues of journals “Ogonyok,” “Novy Mir,” “Molodaya Gvardiya,” “Zvezda,” “Znamya” and “Oktyabr,” newspapers “Krasnaya Zvezda” and “Komsomolskaya Pravda.”

A peculiar object of the exposition is the book “Wartime Tale” by Korney Chukovsky that described the struggle between the Soviet Union and the Nazi Germany using fairy tale analogies. Penza was the only city where the book was released in two versions: a mass-produced monochrome issue and a colored special issue. The book represented at the fair was signed by Korney Chukovsky himself.

Moreover, every visitor can ask to help find information about his relatives lost during the war years using the special databases.

The fair cars are located adjacent to workshop areas that teach children to make holiday postcards and papercraft “doves of peace,” as well as a photo area where every visitor can make a photo of herself in a dress-up wartime garb.

The festivities on the square will last until 18.50, the beginning of the campaign “A Moment of Silence.”