MINSK, 18 March (BelTA) – We should resist the oblivion and cherish the memory of the victims of the Second World War, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Germany to Belarus Peter Dettmar said during an international event to commemorate the victims of the Trostenets death camp, BelTA has learned.
The diplomat noted that by the end of the war, the national-socialist racial madness unleashed by Germany left almost the whole of Europe in ruins, not only in terms of physical infrastructure. “People's immeasurable suffering was even more devastating than the ruins of the European towns and villages. The tyranny of the German invaders on the territory of the present-day Belarus was especially cruel. Ghettos in Minsk and in many other cities, the massacres in Khatyn near Minsk are the non-healing scars from that time. Here, like in all parts of Eastern Europe, targeted persecution and extermination of the Jewish population was the bloody outcome of that war,” he said.
According to the Ambassador, the death camp in Trostenets embodies the crimes committed by the fascists in Belarus. “Here, during the German occupation, peaceful civilians, prisoners of death camps, Belarusian partisans, Soviet prisoners of war fell victims to the national-socialist racial madness,” said Ambassador Peter Dettmar. According to him, thousands of Jewish people from Berlin, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, Cologne, Hamburg and other cities were deported to Minsk and Trostenets. The diplomat also recalled that after the mass executions in Trostenets the criminals tried to destroy the traces of their crimes, because they wanted the memory of those killed to be gone forever. “This why it is so much important for us to resist the oblivion and keep the memory. We owe it to the victims of the war, terror and tyranny. This is especially true for Trostenets because this place, unlike other mass destruction camps such as Auschwitz and Majdanek, is still insufficiently rooted in the European memory as a place of mass extermination and genocide,” the Germany Ambassador noted.
Peter Dettmar said that we need to build a future without forgetting the past. “We do not want the horror to stay with us forever. We want to learn the lessons that will guide future generations. Therefore, we need places like Trostenets for remembrance and memory,” he added.
Mr Mathias Tumpel, the Chairman of the Dortmund International Center for Education and Exchange and the general meeting of participants of the Johannes Rau Minsk International Education Center, thanked the Belarusian authorities for the commemorative meeting. “We are grateful that today we see the memorial, which is a worthy tribute to the memory of the victims of fascism. Its construction continues, and it will also honor those killed in Blagovshchina. This is a masterpiece of Leonid Levin, our great friend and great Belarusian architect. When the memorial is unveiled, it will become a place of remembrance where the relatives of the victims will be able to honor the memory of their ancestors. To us, living today, it will serve as a reminder that such dreadful things should never happen again,” he said.
Trees were planted in memory of those killed in Trostenets. According to Mathias Tumpel, the trees symbolize the memory of all victims of the war, whatever nationality they were.
The commemorative meeting was organized by the Minsk City Hall, with the participation of the Johannes Rau Minsk International Education Center and the Memorial Church of All Saints. Flowers were laid at the Trostenets memorial sculpture by government officials, the clergy of different religions, diplomats accredited in Belarus, the Johannes Rau Minsk International Educational Center and also public associations and political parties.
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