German FM brings apologies to people of Volgograd for Nazi crimes

A decisive pivot that allowed to begin liberation of Europe from Nazi enslavement was made in Stalingrad, German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier said on Thursday as he addressed audiences at the 'Music of the World against War' concert.
"Dear residents of Volgograd, this city was a site of warring and today it is a place of reconciliation and the music you are playing is a symbol of reconciliation," he said.

"Volgograd is a hero city, and who were the heroes?" Steinmeier said. "They were the people who had gone through indescribable sufferings mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, civilian population and soldiers."

"These people made the first decisive pivot in that war and they started liberation of the entire Europe from Nazi enslavement here in Stalingrad," he went on. "For this, they made unfathomable sacrifices."

"I'm bowing to these sacrifices and doing so mournfully," Steinmeier said. "I bring my apologies on behalf of Germany for all the immeasurable sufferings that the Germans brought here to this city, to the whole of Russia, and to all the parts of the former Soviet Union that belong to Ukraine and Belarus today, and to the entire European continent."

Volgodrad was known across the world as Stalingrad from 1925 through to 1961.