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Today, a memorial event to honour Donetsk VOV partisans occurred at Lenin Komsomol Park near the Donbass Liberators Memorial. Donetsk Mayor Igor Martynov, First Deputy Mayor Igor Ponomarenko, VOV veterans, schoolchildren, students, and ordinary citizens attended the event. Martynov pointed up:
It’s very good that we honour the memory of those who fell behind the lines, causing damage to the enemy. Their activities were no less important than the units that advanced and fought at the front. Every year, unfortunately, the cohort of frontline and partisan veterans becomes smaller, but it’d be good if they were to see peace restored in the Donbass. I think that’d be the best gift that we could give them.
For the occasion, the sponsors prepared a concert of military and patriotic songs. Veterans remembered their wartime days and shared stories. The participants observed a moment of silence in memory of those partisans killed in the war and of those who didn’t live to see this day, meeting observed a minute of silence. Ponomarenko said:
We have no right to forget your podvig*, to forget how you rescued Donetsk from a subhuman enemy, from those that murdered millions of innocent civilians. Unfortunately, history repeated itself after many years. We thank you, veterans, for you gave us a city to protect. We assure you… we won’t forget your podvig.
Colonel Yuri Kovalchuk, a VOV vet and Commissioner of the DNR Union of Former Soviet Officers, noted:
The Day of Partisan Glory is a splendid holiday; it honours the celebrated memory of the heroism of the Soviet underground, of the Soviet partisans, for without the partisan movement, we wouldn’t have won the victories at Kursk, Leningrad, and Stalino {the name of Donetsk during the VOV: editor}.
In conclusion, those present laid flowers at the Donbass Partisan Memorial.
During the Great Patriotic War, more than 6,000 partisan detachments and clandestine cells totalling about a million people operated in Wehrmacht rear areas. Approximately one in five won high state awards, and 223 received the title Hero of the Soviet Union. The Day of Partisan Glory occurs every year on 22 September.
23 September 2015
DAN Donetsk News Agency
Voices from Russia 
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