Thomas Scheib, the German ambassador to Serbia, described on Tuesday the attack on Belgrade as the beginning of the crimes that followed, adding that dozens of thousand people were killed in Serbia during the occupation in WWII.
A majority of the Jewish population was killed, thousands in Belgrade, he recalled.
In an article for Politika daily, Scheib wrote it was necessary to preserve „the memory of colossal destruction, fatal hatred and perverted ideology that led to the worst collapse of civilisation in humankind’s history.“
„Let that be a warning and let it serve as a lesson to avoid that from happening ever again. The true reconciliation is unimaginable without a common memory and looking back to what had happened,“ the ambassador said.
On Tuesday, Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic reiterated his country’s commitment to anti-fascism and freedom, describing the 1941 bombing of the National Library in Belgrade as „the greatest single war crime against cultural heritage in all of Europe during WWII.“
„This April 6, by the carter overgrown with weeds and our oblivion, aware of the tragic consequences of that act, I want to point out the necessity of arranging that locality,“ Vucic wrote on his Instagram profile.