23 August
Memorial Day for the Victims of Totalitarian Dictatorships

European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes

In 2011, at the initiative of Hungary, Poland, and Lithuania, the EU Ministers of Justice designated 23 August as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes. This date marks the anniversary of the signing of the Soviet–German Non-Aggression Pact, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, in 1939.

The secret supplementary protocol to the pact, which divided territories and defined spheres of influence between the two powers, only became public in 1990. In December 1940, Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to prepare the plan for the invasion of the Soviet Union — the Barbarossa Plan. On 22 June 1941, without declaring war, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union.

The Stalinist Soviet Union established a one-party dictatorship. It executed most of its own congress participants, carried out ethnic cleansing, and deported and liquidated minority populations. Between 1929 and 1960, eighteen million people were imprisoned in forced labour camps. Both real and imagined opponents were eliminated — including purges of the officer corps, intellectuals, doctors, and military leadership who were sent to Siberian Gulag camps.

Show trials and fabricated cases led to the execution of hundreds of thousands. Thousands of Polish, Latvian, Estonian, and Finnish people were executed on espionage charges. Hundreds of churches were destroyed, and thousands of priests were killed. After the German invasion, the German-speaking populations of major cities were deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia. The Katyn massacre became infamous: 14,700 Polish prisoners of war and 11,000 Polish intellectuals were shot on the recommendation of Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria to Stalin.

The Polish Institute of National Remembrance records 21,768 victims buried in mass graves.

The other totalitarian regime was Nazi Germany and its occupied territories. Hitler, appointed Chancellor in 1933, introduced extraordinary measures. He eliminated the SA leadership during the “Night of the Long Knives,” killing hundreds. Relying on the SS and racial ideology, Hitler devised the plan for the extermination of the entire European Jewish population — the “Final Solution.” Jews’ rights were revoked, restrictive measures were introduced, and the population was incited against them. They were forced to wear the yellow star; their shops were burned, and deportations to concentration camps began. These camps operated not only in Germany but also in occupied countries. Several camps were established in occupied Poland, including Sobibor, Treblinka, and Belzec, where 1.7 million Polish Jews were murdered. Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz–Birkenau. In these concentration camps, 1.1 million people were killed, including Poles, Roma, and Russians.

Worldwide, the two totalitarian regimes caused over 100 million victims.

The peoples of Europe, having suffered under these dictatorships, considered it vital that such horrors never happen again. Therefore, 19 institutes from 13 countries joined forces to document these mass crimes.