President Peter Pellegrini and other senior state officials attended commemorations at Dukla Pass on October 3 marking the 82nd anniversary of the Carpathian-Dukla Operation.
In his speech, President Pellegrini said that increasing military spending and escalating provocations were not a way to ease tensions, but risked further intensifying them. He also referred to the war in Ukraine, where, he said, tens of thousands of young men on both sides are dying every month at an age similar to that of the soldiers who fought and died at Dukla.
“Anniversaries are meaningful only if, when commemorating them, we ask not only what happened then, but also what it tells us today,” Parliamentary Chair Richard Raši (Hlas-SD) said at the ceremony.
Raši added that differences of opinion over the government, legislation, the economy or the country’s direction should not turn into attacks on the country itself.
The Battle of Dukla Pass was fought on the Slovak-Polish border on the Eastern Front of World War II between Nazi Germany and Soviet forces from September to October 1944. It became one of the bloodiest mountain battles of the war, with estimates of total casualties ranging from 60,000 to more than 130,000.
German resistance in the eastern Carpathian region proved considerably stronger than expected. The battle began on September 8, but Soviet forces did not reach the other side of the pass until October 6. Heavy German resistance in the region continued until around October 10.
Source: TASR, Wikipedia
