On August 4, Charge d’Affaires Scott Rauland and UN Permanent Representative Sanaka Samarasinha held a joint commemorative event Minsk in honor of American Ruth Waller who died in Minsk on that day in 1946.  A native of California, Ruth came to the war-ravaged and famined Belarus as an employee of the Belarus Mission of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), a precursor to the United Nations Organization, which provided humanitarian, technical, medical and relocation assistance in the affected countries in the years following the war.  Speaking at the ceremony that took place at the Military Cemetery in Minsk, Scott Rauland marked that “as an American who gave up her life helping Belarusians, Ruth Waller embodies the potential of a better relationship” between Belarus and the United States.