UN General Assembly
1960

129. All peoples need peace. Only those who have not experienced the horrors of war or who, in pursuit of their criminal purposes, disregard the interests of the people, do not cherish peace. The Byelorussian people knows full well the calamities that war brings in its train. The Nazi invaders turned Byelorussian towns and villages into ruins and heaps of ashes. War robbed the Byelorussian people of more than half of its national wealth. Industrial output in the Republic was pushed back several decades, down to the 1913 level. However, the heaviest, the irreparable loss was that in human lives. In the years of the Second World War Byelorussia lost more than 2 million people, or over 20 per cent of its population. When we speak of the consequences of war, the Poles and the Czechs, the French and the British, and other-peoples who have experienced the horrors of war understand us well.