Sergeyenko: despite the policy of mass destruction pursued by fascists, Belarusians did not bend knees to the enemy

Every Belarusian family has its own story and tragic pages related to the Great Patriotic War – as stated by the Chairman of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus, the President’s authorised representative in the Vitebsk Region Igor Sergeyenko, speaking to reporters before the start of the Every Third requiem concert at the Palace of the Republic in Minsk

“I am sure that the Every Third requiem concert can leave no one indifferent, as it mentally transports the audience to the 80 year old times, the terrible years of the Great Patriotic War, when the warfare affected every Belarusian family,” Mr. Sergeyenko said. He recalled that every third Belarusian citizen died then, but – despite the horrors of the war and the policy of mass extermination of the Belarusian nation pursued by fascists – people in the republic did not bend their knees to the enemy. They rather joined partisan detachments and volunteered for the front in 1941, and after the liberation of Belarus in 1944.

As noted by Mr. Sergeyenko, more than 370,000 people fought in the partisan detachments countrywide, “Actually, the resistance was demonstrated by every family, every woman who rescued the wounded and helped partisans. No other country in the world, except for Belarus, has evidenced such a scale of anti-Hitler resistance to the enemy.”

The Chairman of the House of Representatives noted that his father also fought in that war, liberating the Smolensk Region of Russia and then Belarusian Grodno and Mogilev. He was in Germany as well. “He told me much about that time, about the battles and trials, about what Minsk was like. When soldiers were liberating Belarus, there were practically no settlements left. Nevertheless, our people found the courage to rebuild the country in the shortest possible time: in 9-10 years, the potential of the pre-war period was achieved," he said.

Mr. Sergeyenko expressed confidence that every Belarusian family has its own story, its tragic pages related to the Great Patriotic War, “Someone was less lucky, someone was more. The war makes no choice, and sometimes all family members went to the front. For example, Anastasia Kupriyanova’s five sons were killed during the war, and a monument to this woman has been erected in Zhodino. At the same time, there was a family in the Gomel Region, eight sons of which returned home alive.”