Belarus’ Prosecutor General: we work until we know names of every executioner and genocide victims

Thanks to President’s support, the Prosecutor General's Office has been investigating the criminal case of genocide of the Belarusian people for more than four years now. During the opening of the memorial for genocide victims in Mogilev on June 21^st, Belarus’ Prosecutor General Andrei Shved noted that the case, in fact, is a national project involving all people who are not indifferent. There cannot be indifferent people — there is not a single family in Belarus who didn’t lose loved ones in the Great Patriotic War.

photos: belta.by

“In the Kazimirovsky forest, one of many places where the Nazi and their accomplices committed atrocities, people have been killed since the first days of occupation. We’ve obtained reliable information, including testimonies of living witnesses, that since September 1941 fascists have shot, blown up on mines and executed using gas vans women, old people and children. They have pushed civilians into the pits and then thrown grenades. We find evidence, record all these things for us, our children and grandchildren to know the truth about the war. The symbolic memorial we created during the Culture Ministry's contest is named the ‘Tree of Life’. It represents the grief, pain and spirit of unbowed people — all those who have survived, restored the country and given us life,” the Prosecutor General noted.

Over 3 million Belarusians died in the Great Patriotic War, fascists have ruined more than 12,800 cities and villages and conducted more than 180 mass punitive operations on Belarusian land.

“The scale of the tragedy is several times greater than we were told during the Soviet period. Think about it, just in the last few months we learnt about 500 previously undocumented villages that were completely or partially burnt down by the fascists. Unfortunately, this painful figure will only continue to increase. However, we will continue the work on establishing facts of genocide until we leave no site where Nazi murdered and tortured people unknown. Until we know the name of every executioner, and, if possible, the names of those who were tortured by Nazi and are buried in the ground,” Andrei Shved stated.