site.btaPeople Need to Learn History's Lessons - President

People Need to Learn History's Lessons - President

Sofia, May 9 (BTA) - Observances of Europe Day and Victory Day
were held in Sofia and across Bulgaria on May 9. "It is
important to learn the lessons of history and never repeat the
same mistakes," Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev said in his
remarks at an official ceremony in the capital.

The President reviewed the guard of honour outside the Defence
and Staff College and attended a ceremony for laying urns with
soil from the battlefields where Bulgarian soldiers lost their
lives during World War Two.

"The ruins of the most devastating war in the history of mankind
gave birth to an aspiration to peace and to the kind of Europe
where we belong today," the President also said.

He underscored that Bulgarian soldiers shared the credit for the
victory over Nazism after participating in the final stage of
World War Two. "200,000 soldiers and officers fought and 12,000
of them died tragically. Today, we are proud of their
sacrifice."

Plevneliev went on to say that the lessons of history are to be
remembered and added that an increasing number of politicians
use messages of destruction in pursuit of some short-lived
political gains. "A wave of nationalistic parties is inundating
Europe and we have an obligation to remind everybody what this
ideology once brought: hatred and an aspiration to domination of
the stronger over the weaker. Auschwitz came into being, and
the other death camps."

He added that many other lost their lives in the Gulag camps.

"Today, we are members of the most powerful defence alliance,
NATO, and 70 years after the victory over Nazism, we must adhere
to the core European values," the President said. He went on to
express hope that there will be no new battlefields and no more
battlefield soil to be brought to Bulgaria, and that everybody
"will live in a new world peace where law and justice rule".