The International Study Center of the Second World War in Maribor met with the relatives of the deceased prisoners of the concentration camp

The International Study Center of the Second World War, which was established in November 2017 on the initiative of the Russian Embassy in Slovenia with the participation of the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Ljubljana, met with relatives of the deceased prisoners of the Stalag XVIII D.

During the visit, the director of the Museum of People's Liberation in Maribor, Alexandra Berberich Slana, told about prison cards of prisoners and stressed that only last year the names of 1,5 thousand prisoners of war from more than 5 thousand dead prisoners of the camp could be identified. Work to identify the names of other prisoners is going on.

The guests visited the mass grave of Soviet soldiers and Yugoslav guerrillas at the Pobrezha cemetery in Maribor, where they found the names of their relatives.

The International Study Center of the Second World War in Maribor was opened in the building of the former Stalag XVIII concentration camp D. During the war, a concentration camp was set up by the Nazis, where Soviet prisoners of war were detained in inhuman conditions separately from prisoners from other countries. Of the five thousand captured Red Army soldiers brought to the camp in the autumn of 1941 by the spring of 1942, 147 remained alive. In the autumn of 1942, another group of prisoners of war numbering about 2,500 people arrived in the camp, which also suffered the same fate.

The International Study Center, with the assistance of the Embassy and the RCSC, is systematically working to preserve the historical memory of the events, results and lessons of the Second World War and counteract attempts to falsify history. Two international conferences have been successfully held: "Lessons of the past in the name of prosperity of the future" and "History and culture. The role of cultural institutions and non-governmental organizations in preserving cultural memory".

In February 2018, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Russia and Slovenia, S. V. Lavrov and K. Eryavtz signed an intergovernmental memorandum on supporting the activities of the International Study Center.

The Presidential Library portal features electronic collection "Memory of the Great Victory". It includes official documents, photo and newsreels, wartime newspapers, books, agitation and propaganda publications, collections of articles, biographies, testimonies from participants in combat engagements and home front workers, their personal documents, images of combat and labor awards, monuments and memorials complexes, compositions about the war of grandchildren and great-grandchildren of veterans.

According to the portal http://rs.gov.ru