MINSK, 11 April (BelTA) - On the International Day of the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps, the victims and heroes were commemorated in a ceremony at the Stalag 352 memorial complex in Minsk, BelTA has learned.
This day marks one of the tragic chapters of 20th-century history, Vadim Ipatov, Deputy Chairman of the House of Representatives, said during the ceremony. He emphasized that the Belarusian land is steeped in the heroic deeds of its people and dotted with places that the descendants must remember. “Concentration camps were set up on our soil where our people were exterminated. Today, by coming to this place, we pay tribute to those who did not kneel before the enemy. This is exactly what is written on the monument at this very tragic site. Honoring this place is deeply important, because every generation experiences its own joys and sorrows and passes this history on to the next,” Vadim Ipatov said. 
Among those who came to lay flowers were young people and children. “If we do not remember the heroism of our people and those great chapters of history that have built the peaceful life we enjoy today in our beloved homeland, we will have no future. This bond between generations, which is on display today at our rally, is very important. We will continue to remember and carry this memory forward through our generations, the memory that gives us the strength to move ahead," Vadim Ipatov emphasized.
Many facts from those terrible years are still coming to light as part of the criminal investigation into the genocide of the Belarusian people being conducted by the Prosecutor General's Office. Preserving the historical truth is especially important in our time. “This date reminds us of the heroism of those unbroken people who found themselves in the horrific conditions of the concentration camps yet they never gave up. When we see today how history is being rewritten for the sake of short-term political gain by our opponents, it causes us great pain. The history of this memorial is written in the blood and deaths of tens of thousands of our fellow citizens. On dates like this, we make it clear that we will forget nothing. But most importantly, every event we hold is in the name of peace, to emphasize once again that we have had enough wars,” Chairman of the Minsk City Council of Deputies Artyom Tsuran said.
“Our task is to do everything possible to ensure that this never happens again. So that our children can live in peace, enjoy life, build families and careers. So that their plans can be realized in a peaceful country, like the one we live in today,” Artyom Tsuran emphasized.
Vyacheslav Danilovich, Deputy Chairman of the Standing Commission on Education, Culture and Science of the House of Representatives, recalled that there were over 570 concentration camps on the territory of Belarus. "They were designed to exterminate prisoners of war, civilians, partisans, and underground resistance fighters who ended up in these places of death. In other words, the deliberate policy of genocide manifested itself precisely in such sites, and it is here that we today pay tribute to those who laid down their lives in the fight against Nazism," he noted.
Stalag 352 was one of the largest concentration and death camps on the occupied territory of the Soviet Union. In the camp, the Nazis employed a brutal system of torture and degradation of human dignity. From July 1941 to July 3, 1944, more than 80,000 soldiers and officers of the Red Army who had been taken prisoner, as well as civilians rounded up from Minsk and surrounding villages, were exterminated in Stalag 352.
Photos by Vitaly Pivovarchik
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