Opinions & Interviews

MINSK, 29 June (BelTA) - Nazism, chauvinism and totalitarian ideologies should be a closed chapter in the history of mankind, reads the address from Polish President Andrzej Duda to the participants of the event to commemorate the Nazi victims on the site of the former death camp in Trostenets. The message was read out by Krzysztof Szczerski, Secretary of State – Chief of the Cabinet of the Polish President, during the commemorative ceremony in Trostenets on 29 June, BelTA has learned.

“There are a number of different maps of Europe. There are maps of beautiful cities, beautiful temples and palaces, museums and universities. There are maps of trade routes and pilgrimage routes, enchanting natural beauties. Unfortunately, in the 20th century there appeared another special map, the horrifying map of the German Nazi concentration camps and death camps. The map of Jewish ghettos and places of mass executions during the Second World War,” Andrzej Duda said in his message.

According to the Polish president, what is astonishing is that the criminals were fully aware of the moral qualification of their atrocities. The evidence of their awareness was the intention to erase the traces of the crimes - in October 1943 the camp personnel began to burn the exhumed human remains on wooden platforms.

“Today, together with you all I pay tribute to the memory of the murdered men, women and children. It is with pain that I think of the sufferings that Polish citizens had to experience on this land. I join the prayer of all those who have come here to bow heads to the memory of thousands of innocent victims of the German criminals and their accomplices – the people obsessed by the ideology of hatred and contempt,” the address reads.

Andrzej Duda also stressed that there can be no justification for statements and actions that put some nations above others. “In the 21st century humiliation and persecution of people because of race, religion or social status must not be acceptable. By paying tribute to the memory of the victims of Maly Trostenets, Blagovshchina, Shashkovka and other places of extermination, let us do everything we can to make sure that Nazism, chauvinism and totalitarian extermination remain a closed chapter in the history of humanity,” he said.