21.10.2016.

The Great School Class held at Sumarice

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic has said today that nobody has the right to forget the sacrifice made by the city of Kragujevac in the World War II, but that does not mean that any German born after that conflict should carry any guilt.

"The message is clear – it happened, it was horrible, tragic. We can never forget; we have no right to do that. But we can live normally, like humans ... So, none of the young Germans born after the war, has no guilt for what happened in Kragujevac and none of us born after the war has no right to criticize anyone for something from the past", Nikolic told reporters after the Great School Class event commemorating the execution of citizens of Kragujevac, in Sumarice, in 1941.

Nikolic added that from Kragujevac he goes right away to Krusevac, where a German investor’s plant was to be opened and that this was evidence that we should live normal lives.

He said that we should take from the past what makes us better and bigger but the grief of the residents of Kragujevac cannot be described by anyone.

"Every year I watched the poem and I can see that there is always a new way to describe the sadness and not to forget," Nikolic said, adding that he used to come to this place as a student as well, and there has always been a lot of women in mourning who had lost members of their families.

Nikolic expressed regret that the appeal not to repeat Sumarice nowhere and never failed.

The Great School Class Commemorative event in the Sumarice Memorial Park is held in memory of 21st October 1941, when the German occupying forces killed several thousand of the citizens of Kragujevac, including students and their professors.

The event started with the sounding of the national anthem "God of Justice" after which wreaths were laid at the monument raised in memory of the executed students and their teachers,.

Wreaths were first laid by the students of the First Kragujevac Grammar School and the Director, then Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic, representatives of the Ministry of Labour, the City, embassies, political organizations and associations.

On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of this suffering, the poem by Aleksandar B. Lakovic "Voices of the sky under the earth" was performed, directed by Djordje Milosavljevic.

The commemorative event was also attended by the ambassadors of Germany – Axel Dittmann, Slovakia – Dagmar Repčeková, Palestine – Mohammed Nabhan, Ukraine - Oleksandr Aleksandrovych and representatives of the embassies of France, the USA, Israel, Belarus and Russia.

Previously, a liturgy was served in the Church of the Holy New Martyrs of Kragujevac in Sumarice.

In retaliation for the death of ten of their soldiers and wounding of 26 of them during the attack by the Partisan resistant forces on the 3rd battalion of the 749th infantry regiment of Wehrmacht, on 16th October 1941, German occupiers executed on 21st October about 3,000 inhabitants of Kragujevac and surrounding cities, including 300 high school students and apprentices, and 15 boys who worked as shoeshiners.