Belarus is the only country in the world that determined the date of its most important national holiday, Independence Day, by national referendum.
Since 1991 Independence Day has been celebrated on July 27 on the day of the Declaration of Sovereignty of Belarus, but a few years later Belarusians decided that it would be more appropriate to celebrate Independence Day on the day of Minsk's liberation from the Nazi invaders on July 3.
"Today we talk a lot about the need to preserve our common historical memory, especially the memory of the Great Patriotic War, the Great Victory. That's right, it's true. Today more than ever we see that there are examples, they are well known, of intentional distortion of historical events for the sake of political expediency," the ambassador of Belarus to Russia, Igor Petrishenko, said.
"We, Belarusians, have great values – peace and harmony – in our homeland, we cherish them. This treasure we value and cherish carefully. It is important that they be implemented in specific cases, so again we do do not have to pay with blood for peace. That is a way the issue of preserving the historical memory and preventing the distortion of history is understood in Belarus ... In 1943, 60% of the territory was controlled by partisans. While many European countries surrendered without a single shot to Nazi Germany," the ambassador said.
A little over a month ago, on June 22, a monument to ‘Gates of Memory’ was opened in the memorial complex ‘Trostenets’ near Minsk. In the vicinity of the Belarusian village of Trostenets the largest concentration camp on the occupied territory of the USSR operated, the fourth-largest of all those created by the Nazis. The lives of more than 200 thousand people were ended there, different people, not only prisoners of war and partisans, but also civilians – old men, women and children.
619 Belarusian villages were burned by the Nazis together with their residents. There were more than 250 Soviet prisoner-of-war camps, 350 places of detention of civilians, 186 Jewish ghettos.
"A month ago, on June 28 in the village with a symbolic name of Red Beach in Gomel, a memorial complex ‘Child Victims of the Great Patriotic War’ was opened. It is also called ‘a children's Khatyn’. This monument has no analogues in either Russia or Ukraine, nowhere in the world. There were 14 such concentration camps, where blood was pumped from children for the wounded German soldiers of the Wehrmacht, on the territory of Belarus. The Germans destroyed 13 thousand schools in Belarus, children's death camps took the lives of more than 35 thousand children.. This is a holy place of veneration of the victims, an eternal reminder of how priceless the world is,’’ Igor Petrishenko said.
