Kurapaty

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The Kurapaty Memorial near Minsk

Kurapaty ( Belarusian Курапаты ; Russian Куропаты / Kuropaty ; Polish Kuropaty ) is an approximately 10 to 15 hectare large, wooded area near Minsk , on which the Soviet NKVD brought thousands of people in trucks in the period from 1937 to 1941, initially murdering them by shooting and had them buried in mass graves afterwards. Estimates of the number of victims range from 7,000 to 250,000.

The Soviet authorities kept the truth of this crime secret for many years. They tried several times to clear the mass graves and had many remains removed. Soviet state propaganda claimed that victims of the " fascist German occupation " were buried in Kurapaty .

history

Sianon Pasniak , a well-known Belarusian archaeologist and historian , carried out the first excavations in Kurapaty in the late 1980s . His discoveries and many testimonies from witnesses who had lived in the neighboring villages in the 1930s confirmed that they were Belarusian victims of the NKVD. A total of 510 graves were found with an average of around 200 bodies. These discoveries gave a boost to the pro-democracy independence movement in Belarus in the last few years before the end of the Soviet Union.

In 1988 tens of thousands came to Kurapaty to commemorate the victims. The Belarusian Popular Front Adradschenne (White: Адраджэньне = "rebirth") started work at the first meeting in Kurapaty. It was during those years that crosses were erected in Kurapaty and a “people's monument” was created.

Bill Clinton visited Kurapaty in 1994 and donated a memorial . The monument has been damaged three times by strangers, but has been restored.

An incident began on September 20, 2001, on the day of Aljaksandr Lukashenka's re-election , which Western observers described as "undemocratic": Members of the Belarusian Popular Front defended Kurapaty for over six weeks against bulldozers , which, according to the official version, was a bypass road for Minsk should expand, but actually many crosses were destroyed and additional landfill work was carried out. On November 8, 2001, one day after the anniversary of the October Revolution , the regime began a new offensive in Kurapaty: tractors destroyed the graves. Citizens defended the site as a " sanctuary " and carried crosses with them. Many were beaten and arrested by police officers , more than 100 crosses were destroyed, and those who resisted were brought to justice and sentenced. The Belarusian state television also showed the film “Children of Lies” several times, in which the Kurapaty massacre was accused of the Nazis.

The Jewish community of Belarus erected a memorial on October 29, 2004 to commemorate the Jewish and other victims. The brown granite stone bears a Yiddish and a Belarusian inscription: "To our fellow believers - Jews, Christians and Muslims - the victims of Stalinism from the Belarusian Jews."

Since 2007, a group of young Belarusian scholars has been researching the individual fates of the Soviet repression in Belarus and has created a virtual museum about the Soviet repression in Belarus in which other memorials are presented in addition to Kurapaty.

On April 4, 2019, the authorities destroyed around 70 crosses and arrested those who protested, including former political prisoners and the elderly.

On August 21, 2020, a human chain was formed from the Okrestino prison as part of the protests in Belarus 2020 as far as Kurapaty.

  • Kurapaty 1989 (Kalinowski Street)

  • Congregation in Kurapaty, 1989

  • Kurapaty, 1989

Related topics

literature

  • Alfred Grosser : Assassination of Humanity. The genocide in the memory of the peoples. Hanser, Munich and Vienna 1990, ISBN 3-446-15304-7 , p. 91.
  • Elena Temper: No rest for the Kurapaty dead. Shared memory in post-Soviet Belarus . In: Anna Kaminsky (ed.): Places of remembrance of the victims of communism in Belarus . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86331-016-5 , pp. 49-67.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/kurapaty-1937-1941-nkvd-mass-killings-soviet-belarus
  2. ↑ Belarus - Graves under Concrete , spiegel.de, November 26, 2001, accessed on January 8, 2016.
  3. ↑ Places of remembrance and memorials in the Virtual Museum about the Soviet repression in Belarus (in Russian) . Retrieved May 24, 2015.
  4. ^ Protests in Kurapaty continue: Former political prisoner, elderly activist detained. April 4, 2019, accessed April 12, 2019.
  5. ↑ Toughness instead of dialogue: Lukashenko rejects all mediation bids. August 22, 2020, accessed on August 23, 2020 .

Coordinates: 53 ° 57 ′ 56 ″  N , 27 ° 36 ′ 41 ″  E