On May 9, Belarus celebrated the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. According to Emmanuel Ioffe, an authoritative Minsk historian (no relation to this author), the overall number of Belarus’s casualties in that war amounted to 3,074,000, whereas the country’s population on the eve of war was 9,183,000, within current borders. No other country lost as many of its people relative to its pre-war population. The Minsk-based Museum of the Great Patriotic War refers to a more conservative death toll—2,357,000; but according to Ioffe, this number does not cover all deaths among partisans, collaborationists, and among the …read more
Source: The Jamestown Foundation