PEMC

University of Toronto education project risks reinforcing Russian disinformation: Marcus Kolga in the National Post | Macdonald-Laurier Institute macdonaldlaurier.ca/university-of-…

⚡ Wow! Czech Republic bans communist propaganda — up to 5 years in prison President Petr Pavel has signed a law that equates communism with Nazism. Creating or supporting movements based on communist ideology can now lead to up to 5 years behind bars. The law explicitly bans public propaganda, symbols, and slogans associated with communist regimes. 👍🏻 Czechia is doing what Russia still refuses to do — condemning the crimes of the past and breaking free from ideological slavery.

💔Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya holds her husband Siarhei’s hand He spent over 5 years in prison. In 2021, he was sentenced to 18 years, but today, along with 13 other political prisoners, Siarhei Tsikhanouski has been released.

Thank you Sofia @PemcEu in 🇧🇬 100 years after communist assault in St. Nedelya #neverforget victims, demand the truth

"PUTLER WAR CRIMINAL." Narva Castle trolls Russia on 'Victory Day' 🇪🇪While Russia celebrates the USSR victory over Nazi Germany, a giant banner on the Estonian side reads: Putler war criminal. The Narva Museum hung it right on the ancient castle wall — perfectly positioned so that from the Russian side, where video screens show the parade and Putin’s military circus, the banner hits like a slap in the face. 💪Narva, a mostly Russian-speaking city just a few hundred meters from the border, has been putting up such messages since 2022 — a sharp example of how a small country can humiliate an empire with a single banner.

Oleg Gordievsky, the long-standing KGB double agent who defected to Britain, has died peacefully at his home in Surrey aged 86, the BBC understands. Tap below to read more: bbc.in/4ipxEeJ

Fr. Michał Pilipiec, one of the first priests targeted by the regime that the Soviets installed in Poland after WW2, lost his life #OTD in 1944. The communist security service in Rzeszów arrested him, tortured for a few days in the local jail, and finally killed in nearby woods.

#OTD in 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin handed over to Poland documents related to the #KatynMassacre, including the decision ordering the murder of over 21,000 Polish POWs. Under the communist regime, the truth about the massacre was actively suppressed.

10 years in prison for the 1974 murder of a Polish man who wanted to flee to the West. The verdict is not final. The verdict in the case of the murder of Czesław Kukuczka was handed down by the Berlin Land Court (Landgericht) today. The former East German State Security Ministry (STASI) officer Manfred N. was found guilty of the malicious murder of Kukuczka at the Friedrichstrasse railway border checkpoint between East and West Berlin. Necessary evidence of his guilt had previously been collected by the IPN. In 2021 at the request of the prosecutor of the IPN’s Branch Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation in Poznań, the District Court in Poznań issued a European Arrest Warrant against Manfred N. The findings made during the investigation led by the IPN’s Branch Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation in Poznań indicated without a doubt that the GDR security service set a trap for Kukuczka assuming in advance that he would be prevented from leaving East Berlin even at the cost of his life. The perpetrator fired the fatal shot deceitfully, without warning, in the back of the victim, in a way that his death could be foreseen and in a situation in which the victim posed no threat. On 29 March 1974 38-year-old Kukuczka showed up in Poland’s Embassy in East Berlin, where, pretending to be in possession of an explosive device and threatening to use it, he tried to obtain permission to enter West Berlin. A security service officer – a resident of Department I of Poland’s Ministry of Internal Affairs at the Embassy informed the STASI about the situation. The East German security service decided to "box the Polish citizen outside the Embassy when possible". To keep up the pretence, the STASI officers came to the Polish Embassy in East Berlin with documents necessary for Kukuczka to cross the border into West Berlin. After that, they left the Embassy along with him and drove towards the border crossing at the Friedrichstrasse railway station. As he was heading for the underground tunnel, an ununiformed STASI officer, Manfred N., fired into his back from a distance of approximately 2 meters. Severely wounded Pole was then taken to hospital, where he died of his injuries. Kukuczka did not possess any explosive device. To give the appearance of legality to their actions, the East German authorities pretended that he had possessed a firearm, with which he had allegedly threatened the border guards. Kukuczka wasn’t the only Polish victim of the Berlin Wall. In 1967 Franciszek Piesik drowned in a lake while trying to reach West Berlin. Since the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was one of the most stable Eastern European dictatorships. German Communists owed the stability primarily to the omnipotent political police, the infamous STASI (an acronym of Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, Ministry for State Security). @PLinDeutschland @enrs_eu @PemcEu

17 September 1939, 600,000 Soviet troops, thousands of tanks and aircraft crossed Poland's eastern borders. The Kremlin propaganda said they came to "liberate Belarussian and Ukrainian peasants," but only because it sounded better than "unprovoked invasion."

Paul Whelan, Evan Gershkovich, Alsu Kurmasheva, and Vladimir Kara-Murza are coming home.

80 years ago, on 1 August 1944, the Warsaw Rising started. In Poland, we know the price of freedom. How much does it take to stand up for the values you believe in? Look at the heroes of WARSAW🇵🇱 Sound on 🔉 #ThereWasACity🔹warsawrising.eu

This year’s Annual Meeting of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience (PEMC), which unites 72 public and private organizations, took place between 15 and 17 May in Vilnius. It was co-organized by the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania. The Polish delegation was led by the Deputy President of the IPN Karol Polejowski, who participated in a panel devoted to the role of memory spaces in preserving historical remembrance, and their significance as a vehicles of justice. Additionally, the Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II was given the status of a member-candidate as a formal acknowledgment of its application to join the PEMC @VoCommunism @PemcEu @ustr_cr @MemorialSighet @IDMCal

On May 15, 1988, after more than eight years of intervention in Afghanistan and meddling with the pro-communist government, the Soviet troops began a withdrawal from the region.

"My mother was deported when she was nine", says @RJukneviciene, @EPPGroup MEP. Russians use the same methods today with Ukrainian children - trying to remove their identities. Watch⤵️ #BringBackUkrainianKids

@RSI_English Slovak PM Fico is first EU prime minister to be shot since Olof Palme shooting in 1986. He remains in a critical condition. The assailant, 71 yr old man, is in custody. All Slovak opposition parties & opinion leaders condemned the attack. Updates at: dennikn.sk/minuta/

14 May 1948: #Israel gains its independence. U.S. #Democrat President Harry S. #Truman immediately recognized the new country. The 1948 Arab-Israeli #War begins the next day after Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq attacked. #History #historymatters #OTD #ad amzn.to/2Z21LDa

#OTD in 1955, the Warsaw Pact treaty was signed, creating USSR-led military bloc that threatened NATO. The largest military engagement of the Warsaw Pact was the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, where the communists brutally halted the liberal reform process.

We condemn the Slovenian Government's decision to revoke Remembrance Day for Victims of #communism. We urge the Slovenian Government to condemn these crimes and remember the victims. Video with MEPs @DolorsMM, @RomanaTomc, @peter_jahr and experts @JozeMozina and @FerencMitja.

In 1973 in the Nowa Huta district of Cracow, the communists ruling Poland erected the largest Lenin statue in the country. On the night of 17 April 1979, unknown suspects attempted to dynamite it, but only managed to blow off the dictator’s left heel.