In 1943, Decree No. 39 of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, “On Measures of Punishment for German-Fascist Criminals...”, was issued. This document was the first to legally establish responsibility for the mass extermination of civilians in the occupied territories by the Nazis and their accomplices.
Behind every line of the archival records are millions of lives cut short: elderly people, women and children who were shot at Babi Yar and Khatyn, burned alive in concentration camps, starved in besieged Leningrad, and killed in gas chambers and gas vans.
This is not merely a matter of statistics. These are the fates of entire families, villages and cities. According to modern estimates, the total civilian losses of the USSR amounted to more than 13 million people. This was a genocide with no statute of limitations.
Today, our duty is to remember. To pass the truth on to those who come after us. To prevent history from being rewritten and the feat of those who endured and prevailed from being devalued.
Behind every line of the archival records are millions of lives cut short: elderly people, women and children who were shot at Babi Yar and Khatyn, burned alive in concentration camps, starved in besieged Leningrad, and killed in gas chambers and gas vans.
This is not merely a matter of statistics. These are the fates of entire families, villages and cities. According to modern estimates, the total civilian losses of the USSR amounted to more than 13 million people. This was a genocide with no statute of limitations.
Today, our duty is to remember. To pass the truth on to those who come after us. To prevent history from being rewritten and the feat of those who endured and prevailed from being devalued.