Panel Discussion: “Black Ribbon Day” - Remembering The Nazi-Soviet Pact

Add to calendar

Thematic focus

Transnational History
Museums, Memorials and Exhibitions
Other Forms of History Education
Multi-Perspectivity in History Teaching
History of National Minorities
History of Anti-Semitism
Histories of Wars and Warfare
Holocaust
Remembrance / Collective Memory
Europe
Second World War
1918-1939 (“Interwar Period”)

Language

English

Country

Belgium

Address

Rue Belliard | Belliardstraat 135, 1000 Brussels, Belgium

Date

22 August 2024

Time

19:00 - 20:30

(GMT+01:00) Brussels

Description

The House of European History invites you to attend an academic discussion on the memory and legacy of the Nazi-Soviet Pact – or Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – with guest speakers from Great Britain, Lithuania and Poland. This Pact between Hitler and Stalin signed on 23 August 1939 marked the alliance of the Third Reich and the USSR that lasted until the German attack on the USSR in June 1941. The secret protocol in the treaty between Moscow and Berlin paved the way for Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to invade Poland, and thus for the outbreak of World War Two in Europe. In the years and decades after the war, Soviet and later Russian propaganda has sought to minimise and relativise the Pact and its consequences. In the late 1980s, refugees from communism in the West established “Black Ribbon Day” on 23 August as a focus for anti-Soviet protests. On 23 August 1989, 2 million people formed a human chain called the Baltic Way, a defining moment in the Baltic states' battle for independence from the Soviet Union. In 2009, the European Parliament adopted a resolution proposing to recognise 23 August as the “European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Stalinism and Nazism.” What is the Pact’s historical significance? To what extent is the German-Soviet relationship born in August 1939 part of our collective memory of the Second World War? Join the panel discussion to learn more about the Pact and its legacy today. The event will take place on Thursday 22 August 2024 at 18.30 in the House of European History Auditorium. The language of the event is English. Participation is free.

Organiser

House of European History