Sergeyenko: Belarus holds dear memory of Great Patriotic War
Belarus holds dear the memory of the Great Patriotic War, Head of the Belarus President Administration Igor Sergeyenko told the media after a ceremony to lay flowers at the Tank Liberator monument near the House of Officers in Minsk, BelTA has learned.
"The T-34 tank, which stands in the center of Minsk and which was one of the first to break into the then occupied city on 3 July 1944, has become a symbol for the post-war period and for many years to come. This monument embodies the feat of all the soldiers who liberated Belarus and Minsk, a monument to the heroic tankmen of the second Tatsinskaya Tank Corps under the command of General Burdeiny," Igor Sergeyenko said. He also recalled that it was Aleksei Burdeiny who lit the Eternal Flame at the monument on Victory Square in Minsk in 1961. 52 formations and units were awarded the title of Minsk after the liberation of Minsk. Many of them still function as part of the Russian Armed Forces today, he noted.
"This is our history that we must remember, know, and study. This memory is in the names of streets, and in museum expositions, in pieces culture and art, and in monuments. This is our memory, our history, which must be cherished and protected. We treat it this way - as the most sacred and dearest thing," Igor Sergeyenko emphasized.
He urged to honor the memory of the Great Patriotic War in order to appreciate peace and the services of the generation of people who went through the crucible of war. "They know the price of peace more than we do today," Igor Sergeyenko noted. “We, the descendants, are simply obliged to preserve peace. It can't be any other way." In particular, Igor Sergeyenko considers absolutely unacceptable what is happening in the Baltic countries and Poland, Ukraine, where monuments are destroyed and historical facts about the Great Victory are cynically falsified. "This is blasphemy. It cannot be viewed in a different way. The Red Army gave 600,000 lives of soldiers, officers, and generals for Poland alone," he said.
In the run-up to the Victory Day celebrations, senior officials and staff of the President Administration took part in a ceremony of laying flowers at the Tank Liberator monument and visited the Museum of the Armed Forces in the House of Officers.
Written by belta.by