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New memorial cross put up at Stalin-era massacre site near Minsk

A memorial cross was unveiled at Kurapaty, a Stalin-era massacre site just outside Minsk, on October 29.

The cross was put up near a mass grave that is believed to contain the remains of 47 people executed by the NKVD secret police in the 1930s.

Historian Ihar Kuznyatsow said that memorial crosses had already been put up at seven of Kurapaty’s known 20 mass graves. The largest of them contains the remains of 372 people, he said.

There are plans to unveil memorial signs at the rest of the graves as well, Mr. Kuznyatsow said.

Some 80 memorials mark Stalin-era massacre sites in 48 Belarusian localities. “However, only Kurapaty has a sign put up by the authorities that says that this is a place of cultural and historical importance protected by the state,” the historian said.

Mr. Kuznyatsow said that an estimated 200,000 people had been executed in Belarus in 1937 and 1938. “In Minsk alone 80,000 were executed in 1937,” he noted.

The October 29 issue of the government-controlled newspaper Sovetskaya Belorussiya featured an article written by Editor-in- Chief Pavel Yakubovich that described Kurapaty as a “cemetery of a national scale.” //BelaPAN