The Road Through Kurapaty

"The Road through Kurapaty" is a book focusing on a single topic which Radio Svaboda reported on from the fall of 2001 to the summer of 2002 on a daily basis. Kurapaty is a wooded area on the outskirts of Minsk in which tens of thousands of people were executed by the Soviet secret police between 1937 and 1941. The "road" referred to in the title is the highway Belarusian authorities sliced through this hallowed ground - with all the force of bulldozers, the judicial system and special...
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"The Road through Kurapaty" is a book focusing on a single topic which Radio Svaboda reported on from the fall of 2001 to the summer of 2002 on a daily basis. Kurapaty is a wooded area on the outskirts of Minsk in which tens of thousands of people were executed by the Soviet secret police between 1937 and 1941. The "road" referred to in the title is the highway Belarusian authorities sliced through this hallowed ground - with all the force of bulldozers, the judicial system and special police units at their disposal. Attempting to defend this violation of the final resting place of thousands were the dead's descendants - young Belarusian boys and girls, aged veterans of the Gulag, clergymen, archeologists, politicians - and even equally outraged guests from abroad. Setting up a 24-hour vigil in a camp under the white-red-white flag, they stood guard - cleaning up after the construction workers, ensuring unnecesary disruptions of graves, planting crosses. Svaboda's correspondents reported on their every move. "Liberty Library" is a collection of volumes consisting of selected reports of the Belarusian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.