Memorial to Victims of Fascism and Communism, Church of the Holy Trinity, Vojstam 2012. Помнік ахвярам фашізму й камунізму, касьцёл Найсьвяцейшай Тройцы, Войстам 2012 год.
Christmastide is a time of Hope born and Hope celebrated.
Yet as we prepare to welcome the Light and Truth of our Savior we pass a date when we may also be reminded of what man is capable of doing in the service of Evil.
The memorial in today’s photo, in the churchyard of the church in Vojstam in northwestern Belarus, reads:
“To the victims of fascism and communism, 1 September 17 1939”.
Joseph Stalin was responsible for the murder of millions of people and the indelible repression of millions more people, indeed of whole nations, in the Soviet empire. He was born in December 1878 (more likely on December 18, but marked later in his life on December 21).
Stalin’s August 23, 1939 non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, gave Hitler the freedom he needed to invade Poland on September 1, thus launching the Second World War. On September 17, while Poland fought desperately against the Germans, Stalin joined Hitler’s aggression by launching a Soviet invasion of eastern Poland (also considered western Belarus owing to its historically heavily-Belarusian population). Vojstam, whose parish had consecrated its new church only nine days before the Soviet invasion, was one of the many towns and villages taken by the Soviets. After joint Soviet-German victory parades in Brest and other cities, Stalin annexed the lands his forces occupied, plus some areas handed over by Hitler’s troops, into the Soviet Union.
Stalin’s regime carried out systematic murders and mass repressions in these lands until the Germans invaded on June 22, 1941 and began their own savage three-year occupation, which continued until Stalin’s regime re-occupied and re-Sovietized western Belarus as Soviet forces fought toward Berlin.
