The authorized remembrance rally took place in the Belarusian capital on November, 4. It is not the first time that the organizers, the Conservative Christian Party of the Belarusian People Front, have held the event in Minsk’s Loshytsa not long after Dzyady (All Souls’ Day).
In the 1930s, a special NKVD base which Stalin’s secret police took ‘enemies of the Soviet people’ to was located in Loshytsa Yar. Many of the arrestees were executed on the spot. About 10,000 persons were killed here in the thirties, historian, archaeologist and emigre politician Zyanon Paznyak believes.
“They unleashed a genocide of Belarusians in Belarus. There were even execution quotas and lists! They systematically and deliberately destroyed our intelligentsia, which is nothing but a clear policy and practice of genocide of a certain ethnic group, of the entire nation,” Yury Belenki, Deputy Chairman of the CCP-BPF, said.
There have never been archaeological excavations in Loshitsa Yar. Notably, when this place made the headlines in 1988, it became known about this place, the ravine (Yar) was filled in and a garage complex was built there. But even now, according to the activists, Loshytsa is in jeopardy. They say other facilities may soon be erected right here, where innocent people were killed and allegedly buried by Stalinists.
Opposition activists are set to address the city authorities and find out what will be built near Loshytsa Yar. But it is equally important to remember the grim past of this place and raise public awareness of the case in to avoid its reoccurrence.
- Night of Executed Poets: Belarusians read poems in memory of killed by Stalinists
- All Souls’ Day in Minsk: March in memory of Stalinists’ victims in Kurapaty (photos, video)
- In memoriam. Activists light candles near KGB in Minsk
АН, belsat.eu
