Friends!

Today is International Day of liberation of prisoners of Nazi concentration camps.

The day was chosen not by chance – On the 11th of April, 1945, American troops liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp prisoners. But those had managed to raise an international uprising against the Nazis! In March 1945, the German command fled from the camp because of fear that they would be grab American troops. Prisoners took this advantage and staged a revolt and, as a result of which could captured Buchenwald. However, in April 1945 prisoners were released and Mittelbau-Dora (11 April), Bergen-Belsen (April 15) Sachsenhausen (22-23 April), Dachau (April 29), Ravensbrück (April 30).

First concentration camps as a means to destroy the ideological unfaithful people started to be used on the March 1933, when the camp was opened in Dachau. This was the first camp that was subordinated to the SS - Protective orders of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. All other than existing camps subordinated to SA. But after formation lost its influence, it lost power over the concentration camps. The culmination of the existence of these entities was terrible years of war when the camps have become a "factory of death".

In Germany and its occupied countries were more than 14 thousand concentration camps, ghettos and prisons. They held more than 20 million people from 30 countries. For SS confessions, prisoner, who lived in the camp less than a year, brought to the Germans a thousand Reichsmark profit.

Over 12 years in the camps were destroyed almost 12 million people. Among them - about 2 million children.

Friends! We have to remember those who died and those who managed to survive at the concentration camps. Biographies of these people are the best example of courage for future generations. Today, in many countries there are various events, people bring flowers to the graves of victims of the concentration camps. Former prisoners meet, remember the victims, share stories. I believe such can never happen again in the history of mankind. That is why we have to remember these terrible events to honor the people we lost, support those who survived and are still with us.