Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian émigré victims of Stalins repressions remembered in Prague
A memorial gathering at the Olshansky Cemetery on Friday was attended by the Czech President Vaclav Klaus.
Gatherings to honour the memory of the victims of the Stalinist repressions in the Czech Republic are organized each year by the civic organization “They were first”. The organization is made up of descendants of Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian émigrés from Czechoslovakia during the period between the First and Second World War.
It was their parents who in the first days after liberation from Nazism became victims of Stalinist repression. Many of them, despite their Czechoslovakian citizenship, were sent to Soviet labour camps from where they were never to return.
This was the third year that President Klaus took part in the gathering.