75th Anniversary of Hungary's Liberation From the Fascist Occupation Was Celebrated in Budapest

BUDAPEST, Hungary, Feb. 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Events for everyone interested in World War 2 history took place on February 13 in Budapest as part of the "Roads of Victory" international project.

Historians organized a tour of well-known battle sites and a lecture about the liberation of Budapest and the mission of the Red Army in it.

"Roads of Victory" is a large-scale educational project of Rossotrudnichestvo and the Russian Military Historical Society (RMHS). Its purpose is to conduct events in six European cities, liberation of which resulted in war medal honors: Belgrade, Warsaw, Budapest, Vienna, Berlin, Prague.

The Budapest tour took its participants to the Gellert hill, with its Liberty Statue (Szabadság szobor). The statue was erected in 1947 to commemorate the city's liberation from the Nazi forces by the Red Army. Flowers were placed at the memorial for the Soviet soldiers.

Another important stop of the tour was the Holocaust Victims memorial "Shoes on the bank of Danube," erected in 2005.

Massive executions of Jews in Budapest continued until early 1945, with executions in the thousands taking place on the Danube bank to avoid interments.

The Budapest ghetto was liberated by the soviet forces on January 18, 1945, practically with no losses to the imprisoned. At the Holocaust memorial, flowers were placed by representatives of the Hungarian antifascist and resistance society.

Same day, Russian Center of Science and Culture (RCSC) extended a general invitation to attend a lecture conducted by Victoria Petrakova, deputy head of the research department of the Russian Military Historical Society, who remarked, "It was a pleasure to meet such an interested audience, with a large number of young people. We discussed that, as time goes on, the battles of the Great War, its great soldiers, role of the Red Army in liberating Europe of fascism, tend to get forgotten, facts corrupted."

Guests of the lecture participated actively, with everyone confirming that preserving historical memory is important.

Rossotrudnichestvo remarked that the importance of the project is to demonstrate that Russia and other countries have a common past, with more ties than we may think. "Soviet soldiers and their sacrifices are worth remembering truthfully, without falsifications. These are the facts we wanted to deliver to Russian citizens, to citizens of other countries touched by the war. Such horrors must not be repeated."