BOBRUISK, 17 June (BelTA) - All Belarusians should honor the memory of the victory in the Great Patriotic War as the most important legacy, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said as he spoke to Belshina employees in Bobruisk on 17 June, BelTA has learned.
According to the president, little attention was paid to patriotic education of young people and preservation of the memory of the Great Patriotic War in Belarus, which was, probably, one of the reasons for the events which took place in 2020: “We missed this work then. We did not say adults and children at school the things we are saying now that this is our history and we should be proud of it. Thirty million Soviet people died to bring us this Victory. What is Victory? It is our pride,” said the Belarusian leader. He is convinced that the people of Western European countries that were liberated from Nazism should be reminded of this victory more often.
The president believes that Poles should have been reminded more often of how many hundreds of thousands of Soviet people died during the liberation of their country, and the Germans should have been reminded of the fact that the genocide was not only against the Jews, but also against the Belarusians. “We were afraid to say such things. More than 200 graves have been identified recently in Belarus. They contain thousands of remains of the people killed then,” the president stressed.
Aleksandr Lukashenko is convinced that it is also necessary to speak more about all these facts, the events of the Great Patriotic War and the heroism of the people inside Belarus, especially with the younger generation. “We need to talk about it. We need to teach our children to love their land. Only then we will be able to keep this memory,” he stressed.
“Everyone must understand that the Victory in the Great Patriotic War is our legacy. We lost too many (every third resident) then, and we cannot betray them. If we betray them, we will be betrayed ourselves. If only we bury it in oblivion, our grandchildren and children will do the same to us. Let us cherish this legacy - the Great Victory and the fact that we did not become slaves then and that we have this piece of land today. Many may not like that we have taken such a freedom-loving stance, but we are not bothering anyone. We do not have views on something which is not ours. We do not claim someone's lands. We are not going to conquer anybody. We have enough of our own. We will not let anyone bother us, either. This is our simple position,” the head of state said.
