Today marks the 75th. anniversary of the Victory over Nazi-fascism. A date that has an even greater significance when it becomes necessary to defend the truth about what World War II was and what it represented, combat attempts to falsify History and learn from it so that such a tragedy never happens.
May 9, 1945, Victory Day, marks the defeat of Nazi-fascism and its brutal project of exploitation, oppression and world domination.
Nazi-fascism was responsible for the horror of concentration camps, slave labour, a systematic massacre of populations, countless and cruel sufferings and deprivations, for the most devastating war that was ever imposed on the peoples.
Nazi-fascism was the most violent and criminal form of domination conceived by capitalism - the terrorist dictatorship of the monopolies - responsible for one of the darkest pages in History.
World War II was inseparable from the greatest crisis of capitalism and the rise of fascism, which Portugal also witnessed and which the Portuguese people defeated in April 1974. The great economic and financial groups saw in fascism - with its anti-communism and xenophobic nationalism and the programme for the elimination of democratic freedoms and rights, militarism and worldwide expansion - an instrument for the materialisation of its policy of exploitation and domination.
But, if we must not forget the origin, the class character and the heinous crimes of Nazi-fascism, celebrating Victory Day is also, and above all, honouring those who heroically combated it, the millions of men, women and youth, who resisted and fought, giving their lives whenever necessary, to free the world from Nazi-fascist barbarism.
It is of the most elementary justice to stress the decisive contribution of the USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Soviet people and their Red Army, which - at the cost of more than 20 million dead and huge sacrifices - determined the course of the war and enabled to free Humanity from Nazi-fascism.
As it is indispensable to stress the contribution of the anti-fascist resistance which bravely fought against the Nazi occupation forces. Resistance in which the communists, with the workers' movement, assumed a fundamental role, and in which thousands gave their lives for the cause of freedom.
As it is important to bear in mind the role of the Coalition of Allied Countries, which came to be formed during the course of the war.
The campaigns that aim to belittle, distort and deny the role of the Soviet Union and the communists in the Victory over Nazi-fascism can only merit the greatest repudiation. The insulting campaigns that equate the oppressor with the resistant, the executioner with his victim are unacceptable. Campaigns that whitewash and rehabilitate fascism, and that, under the cover of anti-communism, conceal the most reactionary and anti-democratic conceptions and projects.
But no campaign of lies and historical falsification can erase the decisive role of the Soviet Union and the communists in the fight against Nazi-fascism.
A combat that involves the struggle of the Portuguese Communist Party for freedom and democracy, against the fascist dictatorship in Portugal, which collaborated with Nazi-fascism, oppressed, tortured and murdered and was responsible for backwardness, misery, colonial wars.
The Victory over Nazi-fascism represents an achievement of an extraordinary dimension and historical scope.
Following the defeat of Nazi-fascism, with the advancement of the forces of peace, social progress and socialism, the struggle for the emancipation of workers and peoples achieved, all over the world, historical gains, which deeply marked the 20th. century and which continue to have repercussions today.
The most reactionary and aggressive sectors of imperialism promote fascism and war aiming to take exploitation and oppression even further.
Looking at the significance of the date that we mark today, we will understand better the behaviour of all those in our country who aim to rehabilitate the fascist regime and erase the relevance and values of the April Revolution.
At a time when the peoples face serious threats, the PCP calls for the unity of the democrats in the fight for peace, while reaffirming that it is in the hands of the workers and peoples to conquer a better world, opening the paths of freedom, sovereignty, democracy, social progress, liberation from all forms of exploitation and oppression.
