The 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War was marked in Smederevo today with tributes to the victims and the laying of wreaths at the “Tri heroja” monument. The war ended on this day in 1945, with the signing of the documents of Germany’s unconditional surrender in Berlin.
Recalling the great human and material losses during the war and the suffering endured by the city of Smederevo itself under German and fascist occupation, Zoran Tošić of the City Board of SUBNOR stressed that the Second World War was the cruellest and bloodiest in human history and that Yugoslavia made a great contribution to the victory over fascism.
“Unfortunately, it was paid for with great sacrifices, with more than one million seven hundred thousand dead. By far the greatest losses were among the Serbian people, and in this way the Serbs also made the greatest contribution to the defence of the country.
Six thousand fighters from the territory of Smederevo took part in the heroic struggle, and 993 of them, sadly, did not live to see the end of the war.
It is our duty to pass on the freedom-loving tradition of our ancestors to the young and to future generations, and in this way to prevent the rewriting of history,” Zoran Tošić said, among other things.
On behalf of the City, wreaths were laid at the “Tri heroja” monument in the city park, which features the busts of the national heroes Ivan Stefanović Srba, Svetomir Mladenović Sveta and Milivoje Stojković Mića, by the President of the City Assembly, Milan Perić, and his deputy, Marko Grujić, followed by representatives of the Smederevo Police Administration, the city boards of the SPS and SUBNOR, the Association of Descendants of the Warriors of 1912–1918 and the Smederevo Society for the Development of Fraternal Relations between the Russian Federation, the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Belarus.
The ninth of May is also marked as Europe Day, established in memory of the 1950 declaration by the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, which is regarded as the first official step towards the creation of the European Union.
