Фото: facebook.com/EUinBelarus
European diplomats have paid tribute to the victims of Stalinist repressions at the Kurapaty memorial site near Minsk. On October 30, representatives of diplomatic missions from EU member states and the United Kingdom visited the memorial, where NKVD officers carried out mass executions between 1937 and 1941.
Photos were published by the EU Delegation to Belarus.
“Kurapaty is a memorial on a site of mass executions by NKVD, the Soviet secret police, in 1937-1941. The site was discovered in the 70s and 80s through witness accounts, which led to excavations, archaeological research, gradual state recognition, and memorialisation. Estimates of the number of victims vary and reach over a hundred thousand. The archives remain closed. Archaeologists were able to establish the names of only two of the victims. Over the decades, memorial signs have been put up in commemoration of the many people of different backgrounds who fell victim to state tyranny and terror,” the EU Delegation said in a Facebook post.
The German Embassy recalled that on the night of October 29–30, 1937, numerous members of the Belarusian intelligentsia, including poets and writers, were executed in Minsk.
“Their bodies were buried at the Kurapaty site on the outskirts of Minsk. It is believed that between 1937 and 1941, up to 250,000 people were killed and buried in this way in Kurapaty alone. Every year, many Belarusians pay tribute to the memory of these murdered cultural figures,” the diplomatic mission said.
The previous day, October 29, the Berlin Literary Colloquium hosted the “Night of Unshot Poems 2026: A Meeting with Belarusian Literature Destroyed”. This year’s event was dedicated to literary circles that existed in Belarus in the 1920s and 1930s. The event was held in Belarusian, Yiddish and German.
Lithuanian Foreign Ministry Ambassador-at-Large Asta Andrijauskienė posted photographs from Kurapaty on X, along with the poem “Prysiaha” (“The Oath”) by Mikhas Charot, who was executed on the night of October 29–30, 1937.
Photo: facebook.com/EUinBelarus