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Minsk commemorates Holocaust victims

MINSK, 25 January (BelTA) – A ceremony timed to the International Holocaust Remembrance Day has been held in Minsk, BelTA has learned.

Taking part in the ceremony were former prisoners of concentration camps, people born during the war and people who survived the war, representatives of diplomatic missions and various religious denominations.

The event began with a meeting at the Association of Progressive Judaism Communities where six candles were lit to symbolize the six million Jewish people killed in the Holocaust. The participants of the ceremony proceeded to Sukhaya Street to the memorial dedicated to European Jews who were deported to the Minsk Ghetto and the Maly Trostenets death camp.

In the run-up to the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the exhibition “Following the heart – saving people in the occupied Soviet territory during the Holocaust” was opened at Leonid Levin’s history studio.

An address of Belarus’ Minister of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Makei was read out during the event. In his address timed to the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the minister noted that for centuries the Belarusian land has been home to people of various nationalities, a place where all ethnicities lived in peace and respected each other’s traditions and customs.

“Unity and mutual support fully manifested themselves in the face of the fascism that started an unprecedented war 80 years ago which cost us millions of lives and left a deep scar in the history of humankind,” the address read.

Vladimir Makei said that the Nazi policy of genocide in the occupied territories, including the Holocaust, left bleeding wounds on the Belarusian land: thousands of burned villages and dozens of destroyed ghettos. “United by the common fate, Belarusians and Jews withstood the fascist aggression together. A lot of Belarusians showed exceptional courage and selflessness and risked their lives to save Jews from inevitable death. Over 700 Belarusians were named Righteous Among the Nations,” the minister noted.

In 2019, Belarus will celebrate the 75th anniversary of its liberation and many events will be timed to this date. The minister said that it is symbolic that the event timed to the International Holocaust Remembrance Day became the first of them.

“Belarus makes a lot of effort so that the legacy of World War II will not be forgotten in Belarus or anywhere else,” Vladimir Makei noted. “We understand our responsibility to preserve the memory of the war and its victims very well. We need this to instill strong resentment towards any armed aggression in our children and in all future generations.”

The International Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked on 27 January. On this day in 1945, the Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz, the biggest concentration camp in World War II where over 1.1 million Jews were murdered. According to different estimates, over 800,000, or around 90% of the Jewish population of Belarus was killed in the war.

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