USSR
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In May 1944, one of the most tragic forced deportations of the twentieth century began when the government of the Soviet Union ordered the mass expulsion of more than 200,000 Crimean Tartars from their homeland in Crimea. The Soviet authorities, led by Joseph Stalin, accused the entire Tartar population of collaborating with the German army…
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Some of you may know that I’m a rock fan, and one of my favourite bands is Queensrÿche(with Geoff Tate). One song in particular has always stayed with me: “Home Again.” The song explores the emotional toll of war from two perspectives — a father on the battlefield and his daughter waiting for him at…
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When I say “the Jews who fought alongside the Nazis,” it really was a case of the enemy of my enemy—is my friend, or rather they had a common enemy. The photograph above is of Finnish Jewish soldiers on leave during Rosh Hashanah in front of the synagogue in Turku, Finland, in 1943. Finland’s involvement…
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The Holodomor comes from the term moryty holodom which translates as “death inflicted by starvation.” A man-made famine that convulsed the Soviet Republic of Ukraine from 1932 to 1933, peaking in the late spring of 1933. Millions of Ukrainians were killed in the Holodomor, engineered by the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin. The primary victims…
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On November 17, 1917—just weeks after the Bolsheviks seized power—Vladimir Lenin delivered one of his most explicit defenses of suppressing opposition newspapers. In the document “Draft Decree on Freedom of the Press” and accompanying statements, Lenin justified what he called a temporary abolition of press freedom, framing it as a revolutionary necessity rather than a…
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The massacre that took place in Slonim on November 14, 1941, stands as one of the many tragic and brutal episodes in the systematic annihilation of Jewish communities across Eastern Europe during the Holocaust. Located in what is now western Belarus, Slonim was home to a vibrant and historically significant Jewish population before the German…
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No one can deny that the Nazis committed unspeakable atrocities against civilians during World War II. However, they were not the only ones responsible for such horrors The Nemmersdorf Massacre, which occurred on October 21, 1944, is one of the most controversial and horrific episodes of World War II. It took place in the East…
History of Sorts 