Belarus lost roughly a third of its entire population during World War II — proportionally one of the heaviest death tolls of any nation involved in the conflict. The republic was under German occupation from 1941 to 1944, and the partisan resistance operating out of its forests was substantial enough that German anti-partisan operations consumed significant military resources throughout those years. This coin was issued for the 65th anniversary in 2010, a year when Victory Day observances across the former Soviet republics still carried genuine generational weight, with surviving veterans present in diminishing numbers.
Belarus lost roughly a third of its entire population during World War II — proportionally one of the heaviest death tolls of any nation involved in the conflict. The republic was under German occupation from 1941 to 1944, and the partisan resistance operating out of its forests was substantial enough that German anti-partisan operations consumed significant military resources throughout those years. This coin was issued for the 65th anniversary in 2010, a year when Victory Day observances across the former Soviet republics still carried genuine generational weight, with surviving veterans present in diminishing numbers.