Wreaths laid to the Soviet military memorials in Berlin

Wreaths were laid to the Soviet military memorials in Berlin - Treptov Park, Tiergarten and Schoenholzer - on the Victory Day, Wednesday. As tradition has it, participating in the ceremonies were veterans of the Great Patriotic War, Russian diplomats, representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church in Germany, staffers of different Russian offices in Berlin, deputies, representatives of diplomatic missions of different countries, delegates of different parties and socially-oriented organisations of Germany, for instance, the Party of Democratic Socialism. As usual on this day residents of Berlin, regarding May 8th as the day of German people's liberation from the Nazi, came here with flowers. Germans bring flowers to more than 500 Soviet military monuments and burials on the territory of the former Democratic Republic of Germany - Eastern Germany, without extra pompousness. As many as 390,000 Soviet soldiers were killed here on the way to Berlin. In Berlin there are over 10 big and small memorial monuments where Soviet soldiers and officers, who died in the last hours of the great battle for freedom of European nations, were buried. In Western Germany there are some 3,500 cemeteries and burials where over 800,000 Soviet POWs and peaceful Soviet civilians, who were driven away by force to the territory of the Third Reich, were buried. In Eastern Germany a law has been effective since 1953, envisaging that all these burials be considered graves of the victims of war and tyranny." They are looked after on a permanent basis.