Тhousands of the best representatives of the Ossetian people fell victim to fascism during 1941 - 1945, according to the statement of the South Ossetian Foreign Ministry.
On Sunday, Russia is marking the first Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People committed by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.
"On this day, April 19, 1943, with more than two years remaining until the Victory Day of May 1945, Decree No. 39 of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued 'On Punishment for Nazi Villains Guilty of the Murder and Torture of Soviet Civilians and Captured Red Army Soldiers, for Spies, Traitors to the Motherland from Among the Soviet Citizens, and for Their Accomplices,'" the Foreign Ministry stated.
They noted that the total number of civilian casualties in the USSR during the occupation was approximately 14 million.
"These atrocities, which have no statute of limitations, were on a scale unprecedented in human history.
The German invaders and their accomplices destroyed and burned hundreds of thousands of settlements.
"The mass extermination of people was carried out using barbaric methods and means, including executions, gallows, gas chambers, incineration, starvation, cold, unbearable physical labor, and the spread of epidemics," the Ministry has emphasized.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has added that the memory of those terrible years has not been forgotten in Belarus, where the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Great Patriotic War and the Genocide of the Belarusian People is celebrated annually on June 22.
"Today we are commemorating those who sacrificed their lives to defend the Motherland, all those who perished, were tortured in Nazi captivity, and died in the rear from hunger and deprivation," the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reads
