Communist Terror

This morning's meeting of the council of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience in Katowice. The Platform is an umbrella organisation of many other organisations, including museums, which promote knowledge of totalitarian history in Europe.

We are on the way today to Katowice, Poland, for the annual meeting of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience. In 1981, there was a strike in the Wujek coal mine there. The communist regime killed nine strikers.

A brilliant graphic at the Silesian Freedom and Solidarity Centre in Katowice. This is where 9 miners were killed by the communist regime in 1981. The horrible incident was a stepping stone towards freedom.

On this day in 1948, the great Witold Pilecki was shot. An astonishing, brave and enterprising man with a powerful sense of duty.

OTD in 1948, Soviet structures started the largest mass deportation in Lithuania. During the operation 'Vesna', ~40,000 people were deported – families and supporters of the 🇱🇹 Freedom fighters. Many lost their lives en route or died of slavish labour, deprivation and diseases.

Some of what it means to live in Communist Cuba: "Ordinary Cubans live with little ability to express or conduct themselves or travel as they would wish. Barely a single new hospital has been built in the years since Castro came to power, and those used by Cuban residents are often crumbling colonial edifices with shockingly poor sanitation." telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/2…

Communist regimes have usually despised and persecuted religions and yet they have been similar to religions themselves. The preservation of relics of their "saints" is a prime example.

'He remembers being at a polling station in North Korea. “I was following my parents – people lined up, nicely dressed. And at the door, someone gives you an envelope,” he says. “You don’t even know what’s inside. There’s just one candidate. And you put it in a box. And if you don’t, you end up in prison. And that is what they call a democratic election.' telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/0…

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." C. S. Lewis

🇱🇹 has lodged a protest note to Russia over the removal of a memorial stone in Tomsk honoring deported Lithuanians. Russian authorities seek to erase the memory of Stalinist crimes and of millions that fell victim to mass repressions. We will always remember those who suffered.

Too few people are aware of the huge amount of torture and imprisonment imposed by the North Vietnamese communists on both North and South Vietnam. This is a map of reeducation camps and prisons as per the Vietnamese Heritage Museum website: share.google/Ikxfq33RV3HBY7…

"Chernobyl: Days that Shocked the World" survivors and witnesses remember the disaster and the Soviet Union's cover-up. C4 on Monday at 10pm and then streaming. share.google/ecruDB3XZZ9JTB…

When McDonald’s first opened in Russia, 30,000 people lined up at 4 a.m., willing to spend half a day’s wages on a Big Mac, while many Soviet customers were puzzled by something unfamiliar—a cashier smiling at them.

"Based on the fact that all of them are steadfast incorrigible enemies of Soviet power, the USSR NKVD deems it essential: I. To propose that the USSR NKVD: Give special consideration to… Imposing on them the sentence of capital punishment – execution by shooting." Beria's proposal which was signed by Stalin himself and brought about the Katyn Massacre in 1940. Commemorated today.

Katyn Massacre: "We have been obliged to deflect attention from possibilities which, in the ordinary affairs of life, would cry to high heaven for elucidation...We have, in fact, perforce used the good name of England like the murderers used the little conifers to cover up a massacre." The words of Sir Owen O'Malley to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, May 1943. From 'Stalin's War' by Sean McMeekin, p447.

📖"At dawn they came" by @GilesUdy is one of THE books every adult should read ⤵️ #USSR #SovietTerror #WW2

This excellent book is currently available on Amazon.co.uk but probably not for much longer. amazon.co.uk/At-Dawn-They-C…