Address of the President of Belarus to fellow Belarusians on the occasion of the National Remembrance Day of the Victims of the Great Patriotic War and the Genocide of the Belarusian People
22.06.2022Dear compatriots,
Today we recall a sad date. Eighty-one years ago a warm and sunny Sunday morning of 22 June marked the start of bombing, the merciless extermination of civilians and endless pain for millions of Soviet people. The fascist terror had such a horrendous scale that we still do not know the exact number of casualties.
The General Prosecutor’s Office has been investigating the genocide of the Belarusian people for more than a year. It has identified many new mass graves containing the remains of people who were shot, hanged, burned alive.
Many in the West would like to forget about the atrocities committed by their fathers and grandfathers on our land. They have already rewritten the history of the war in their textbooks, consigned to oblivion the great feat of the Soviet soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the freedom and life of the peoples of Europe. Now they are targeting our historical memory.
Yet, we know that the voice of the truth will break through the wall of silence and lies. The crimes of the Nazis on Belarusian soil will receive a proper legal assessment, and the results of the investigation will be presented to the world community.
Belarus remembers all the heroes and innocent victims of that war. It also remembers the names of those who collaborated with war criminals and participated in massacres.
We will do everything so that our children and grandchildren will remember it as this is a guarantee of the unity of the nation and a peaceful future of the state.
On the National Remembrance Day of the Victims of the Great Patriotic War and the Genocide of the Belarusian People, we, Belarusians bow our heads before the sacred feat of the victors who liberated the world from Nazism and we raise our voice in defense of historical truth and justice.
