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Lest we forget
Massive emotional tribute to anti-Nazi heroes
Brest Fortress Memorial [Lena Armstrong/Creative Commons]

Brest Fortress Memorial, Belarus


ON SEPTEMBER 18, 1971, just over 30 years after the momentous if doomed defence of the Brest fortress by the Soviet Red Army against Nazi invaders, a memorial to its defenders was unveiled by the 19th-century star-shaped citadel that sits astride the Mukhavets River and faces the River Bug.

On the present boundary between Belarus and Poland, within the latter’s borders before WWII it served as one of its places of internment for socialist activists.

Two weeks after Nazi Germany’s treacherous attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, Joseph Stalin ordered the Red Army to advance west and secure territories up to the River Bug, including the Brest fortress. Permitted under the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of August 1939, it was a move designed to keep German armies at arm’s length.

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