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Memorial stone unveiled at Kurapaty

A memorial sign has been unveiled at Kurapaty, the woody place just outside Minsk where thousands are believed to have been executed and buried by Josef Stalin's secret police in the 1930s and at the beginning of the 1940s.

The memorial is the foundation stone of Kurapaty that was damaged in a vandal attack in the fall of 2005. The vandals then took away the metal tablet that was fixed on the stone. The tablet bore a text, “A monument to victims of the 1937-41 atrocities will be built in this woodland under a resolution by the Council of Ministers of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, dated January 18, 1989.”

A new tablet was fixed on the stone this past spring. A group spearheading the commemoration of Stalin terror victims engraved a text on the stone, reading “To Victims of the Stalinist Regime.”

Kurapaty is regularly targeted by vandals. Cross of Sorrows installed by pro-democratic advocates in 1989 was damaged in the most recent attack.

Historian Ihar Kuznyatsow, who co-chairs the group spearheading the commemoration of Stalin terror victims, told BelaPAN that the cross had been damaged by vandals repeatedly in the past, blaming the attacks also on the local police department that refused to open criminal proceedings over yet another vandal attack earlier this year, citing the non-inclusion of the Kurapaty memorials into the list of government-protected historic and cultural heritage.

The group held a meeting on Monday to discuss their activities. They decided to move part of materials of the Babruysk museum commemorating Stalin terror victims to the private museum of historian Anatol Bely. The Belarusian Association of Political Victims that owns the Babruysk museum located in a three-room apartment does not have enough funds to pay the rent.