Armenians in Minsk (Belarus) honored the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide

Report Prepared for OCP News Service
Nadezhda Filipchik
April- May 2015

This year world marked the centenary since the beginning of the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. Around one and a half million of people became the victims of that tragedy. Every year on the 24th of April Armenians all over the world mourn for the terrible chapter in the history of their people. This year Belarusian Armenians came to the War cemetery in Minsk in order to honor the memory of their ancestors. The ceremony was also attended by the Russian and Armenian ambassadors to Belarus and by the representatives of the local authorities and of church.

The officials lit the candles in the church of St. Alexander Nevsky, located on the cemetery. Then the ceremony proceeded near the stone monument Khachkar, constructed on the cemetery after the Armenian earthquake in 1988. Father Nikolai Korzhich, the senior priest of the church of St. Alexander Nevsky, held a memorial service near Khachkar. The head of the Belarusian Orthodox Church Metropolitan Pavel and Metropolitan Filaret, the honourable Patriarchal Exarch of all Belarus, also passed their condolences to the people of Armenia.

Gayane Agadzhanyan, the head of the Armenian school in Minsk, was among the Belarusian Armenians who decided to visit the ceremony. On her opinion, the antipathy between the young people of Turkey and Armenia will come to the end only when the elder generation will accept what has happened and admit the fact of genocide. Yet nowadays even in a century since the end of the genocide the mutual hatred still exists.

The tragedy which happened 100 years ago with the Armenian people has no period of limitation. We should remember about it in order to avoid the similar catastrophes in our future.

The ceremony on Minsk War cemetery ended with the prayer “Our Father” read in Armenian by the ambassador of this country.

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