Students executed by Nazis remembered 70 years later

Students executed by Nazis remembered 70 years later

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić said at the event that he was pleased to see so many children attending the commemoration ceremony, noting that they are here to learn more about this tragic event.

"No matter how many years have passed, each Great School Class feels as if this tragedy is taking place before our very eyes," Nikolić told reporters after the ceremony in Šumarice.

The event held to commemorate the execution of thousands of innocent people including students and professors of the First Kragujevac High School, "Kragujevac and Serbia are sending a message to the world that crimes such as this one must never be allowed to repeat."

Actors from Belgrade and Kragujevac staged a musical performance comprised of excerpts from 30 poems and plays written by authors from Serbia and abroad in memory of victims of the Kragujevac massacre.

The commemoration and the wreath laying ceremony was also attended by officials of the Serbian National Assembly and government, ambassadors of Germany, Russia, Belarus, Slovakia and Palestine, representatives of Serbian Armed Forces and religious communities, delegations of 14 sister cities of Kragujevac, students and professors of the First Kragujevac High School, and numerous citizens, including the descendants of the victims.

Several thousand civilians in Kragujevac were executed by German firing squads on October 20 and 21, 1944, in retaliation for the military casualties suffered by the Nazis, "in one of the most tragic Second World War events in the territory of Serbia," said Tanjug.

The Nuremberg Trials heard that around 7,000 civilians were executed in Kragujevac. Modern research revised this number to 2,792 as this is the number of victims whose names, date and place of birth, and vocations have been determined. The victims include 270 children, the youngest of whom was only 11 years old.

As of 2011, October 21 is marked in Serbia as the National WWII Victims Remembrance Day, with numerous commemorative events held in Kragujevac every October.