Opinions & Interviews

Senator: Memory about the Great Patriotic War lives in the heart of every Belarusian

MINSK, 7 May (BelTA) – Memory about the Great Patriotic War is sacred and is in the heart of every Belarusian, BelTA learned from Chairwoman of the Council of the Republic of the National Assembly of Belarus Natalya Kochanova on 7 May.

Natalya Kochanova stressed that the Great Patriotic War will stay in the heart of every Belarusian forever because Belarus was the first country to feel the mighty blow of the Nazi and stayed occupied for over three years.

The speaker is convinced that those trying to rewrite history will fail because there are people, who remember, and there are people, who preserve the holy memory about that war. “Our job is to pass on this memory and truth to the generations to come after us. It is very important. There is no future without the past,” she added.

The senator took part in a videoconference dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory on 7 May. During the discussion with heads of parliaments of post-Soviet countries Natalya Kochanova noted that Belarusians take pride in the heroic deeds committed by defenders of the Brest Fortress, by partisans and by underground resistance fighters, and by those, who worked hard at the homefront to make the victory possible. “We lost every third citizen – in frontline battles, in concentration camps, in peaceful villages that were burned down. And we will never forget it. President Aleksandr Lukashenko absolutely correctly said that Belarus is a living monument of that war,” she reminded.

Participants of the videoconference discussed the preservation of historic memory about the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, patriotic education of the youth, and support for war veterans. The head of the upper chamber of the Belarusian parliament pointed out that veterans, those, who restored Belarusian towns and villages from the ashes after the war, and children of the war feel special warmth and care in Belarus. “We do and will do everything in order to help them, make them warm with the warmth of our souls,” Natalya Kochanova said. She reminded that the campaign Belarus Remembers has been organized for many years already. An international campaign “To the Glory of the Common Victory!” was launched in 2019. Natalya Kochanova thanked Chairwoman of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of Russia Valentina Matviyenko. The Russian senator joined the campaign when she visited Belarus in March. Back then the speakers of the upper chambers of the Belarusian parliament and the Russian one handed over a capsule with soil collected from sites of fierce battles near the Russian city of Rzhev to the All Saints Memorial-Church in Minsk.

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