Kurapaty

Kurapaty (White Russian Курапаты; Russian Куропаты / Kuropaty; Polish Kuropaty ) is a 10 to 15 acre, wooded site near Minsk, where the Soviet secret police NKVD in the period from 1937 to 1941, tens of thousands (possibly more than 250,000 ) people primarily by shoot murdered and buried.

The Soviet authorities kept the truth about this crime for many years a secret. They tried several times to destroy the mass graves and left many human remains taken away. The official propaganda claimed that the fascist occupation were buried in Kurapaty victims.

Sianon Pasniak, a well-known Belarusian archaeologist and historian, introduced in the late 1980s from the first excavations in Kurapaty. His discoveries and many details of witnesses who had lived in the 1930s in the neighboring villages, confirmed that it was Belarusian victims of the Soviet secret police NKVD. These discoveries gave the pro-democracy movement for independence in Belarus in recent years before the end of the Soviet Union buoyancy.

1988 came after tens of thousands Kurapaty to commemorate the victims. The Belarusian Popular Front Adradschenne ( weißr.: Адраджэньне = " rebirth " ) adopted at the first meeting in Kurapaty on their work. In those years, was begun to erect crosses in Kurapaty and to create a "people's monument".

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

An incident began on 20 September 2001, on the day of re-election Lukashenko, which was named by Western observers as " undemocratic": Members of the Belarusian Popular Front defended Kurapaty about six weeks against bulldozers that develop a close location bypass for Minsk to the official version should, where many crosses but actually destroyed and additional filling works were carried out.

On 8 November 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 wore crosses with it. Many were beaten and arrested by police officers, more than 100 crosses were destroyed, resisters end were tried and convicted in court.

The Jewish community of Belarus established on 29 October 2004, a memorial to the Jewish and other victims. The brown granite stone bears a Yiddish and a White Russian inscription. " Our fellow believers - Jews, Christians and Muslims - the victims of Stalinism of the Belarusian Jews "

Assembly in Kurapaty, 1989

Kurapaty, 1989

Kurapaty

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