To Veterans' Memory Devoted...

"Attention! Moscow is speaking! Moscow is speaking! From the Soviet Information Bureau! Today, on June the 22nd, at 4 A.M. the fascist Germany has attacked the Soviet Union without declaring a war! The Great Patriotic War has begun!" Those words broke hopes and dreams of millions of the Soviet people, millions of children became orphans, the Russian women began to call themselves "pokrytki" as many years ago. How many broken fates! The army of the invader counted 5,5 million of soldiers and officers, it was armed with the most modern technique: 4,3 thousand of tanks, 4,9 thousand of planes, 47,3 thousand of grenades and heavy mortars and others. Germany's allies - Italy, Hungary, Rumania, Finland, Slovakia - also presented a great amount of troops and technique to help the aggressor.

On July 24th 1841 a poem by V.I.Lebedev-Kumach "Holy War" was published in the newspaper "The Red Star". The poem, being set to music by A.V.Aleksandrov, has become an immortal and never-fading song-alarm-bell, a song which is a symbol of the severe war time:

"Get up, my vast country, Get up for a mortal battle, With the fascist dark force, With the cursed horde!"

It was with this song that yesterday's school and college boys and girls went shoulder to shoulder to fight against the enemy, They stood at machines of plants and factories during days and nights. Everything was devoted to the front! Everything was devoted to victory! The world remembers steadfast heroes of the Brest fortress, defenders of Leningrad and Stalingrad, Kiev and Minsk, Odessa and Sevastopol, Novorosijsk and Kerch, Tula and Smolensk, Murmansk. These cities have become cities-heroes.

Today, June the 22nd is the day of beginning of the Great Patriotic War. This is a day of great sorrow. Citizens of all the country are honoring the memory of those who have perished from "paws" of hated fascists. Today's school children and students remember with gratitude heroic deeds of their contemporaries who lived during that cruel time.

Activities, devoted to the 65th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War, took place in many cities of Ukraine. In Donetsk, in the Pushkin bld. Veterans of the Great Patriotic War recalled their war youth and combat friends, who have not come back from battle fields, to music of marches, played by a wind orchestra and songs performed by the leader of the Theater of Patriotic Song Guennadi Shevchenko. The participants of the concerts, arranged by the All-Ukrainian party of Spirituality and Patriotism, expressed their deep gratitude to everybody who kept in his memory those horrifying days and nights of the heroic 1941.