30 October 2007
Civil society activists commemorate victims of Stalin’s terror in Minsk

Civil society activists held commemorative ceremonies for the victims of the Stalinist terror at several places in Minsk on October 29.

A group of some 25 people took part in the commemorations, including Pavel Sevyarynets, a co-chairman of the founding committee for the Belarusian Christian Democracy party; Aleh Makayew, a leader of sole entrepreneurs; artist Mikola Kupava; prominent opposition politician Vyachaslaw Siwchyk; historian Larysa Androsik; Uladzimir Kishkurna, a leader of the Belarusian Popular Front; and members of the Adradzenne (Revival) choir.

In particular, they visited Loshytsa Park, Chalyuskintsaw Park and Kurapaty, where mass executions took place in the 1930s and 1940s.

They laid flowers and wreaths tied with white-red-white ribbons saying, “To the Victims of Stalinism in the Year of Memory,” put up candles and observed one minute of silence in remembrance of the victims of Stalinist purges. Orthodox priest Leanid Akalovich led those present in prayer for the slain innocents, “who died for our Belarus and its independence.”

The group also visited the site of the former Trastsyanets Nazi death camp to commemorate prominent World War II nationalist Vintsent Hadlewski (Wincenty Gadlewski) who was executed there by the Nazis in 1942.

Vintsent Hadlewski was born in a village near Vawkavysk in 1888. He graduated from a Catholic seminary in Vilna (Vilnius) and earned a master's degree in theology from the St. Petersburg Catholic Academy. He became one of the first priests to conduct services in Belarusian. In 1918, he was a member of the provisional government (Rada) of the Belarusian National Republic and a founder of the Belarusian Christian Democracy party. When Western Belarus was under the rule of Poland, Hadlewski served as a professor at a Belarusian seminary in Nyasvizh and spent two years in a Warsaw prison for Belarusian propaganda. In the 1930s, he founded and edited the newspaper Bielaruski Front, in which he developed his theories about Belarusian politics and statehood. After the Soviet invasion of 1939, Hadlewski moved first to Warsaw and then to Berlin. In October 1941, he was appointed to serve in Minsk as chief school inspector. He believed that the Germans would grant the Belarusians at least broad autonomy if not independence. He was one of the founders of the Belarusian Independence Party and a leader of Belarusian People's Self-assistance, underground nationalist organizations viewed by the Soviet authorities as collaborationist with the Nazis. However, Hadlewski was arrested by the German police on Christmas Eve 1942 and shot at Trastsyanets on the same evening.

Historians say that no less than 5,000 people were executed by the NKVD in 1932 and 1933 in the forest where Chalyuskintsaw Park stands now. //BelaPAN