This year, the Nobel Peace Prize honors human rights activists and historians in Eastern Europe whose fearlessness and self-sacrifice in times of war impresses and – in two cases – many believe saves the honor of their countries.

The Kiev Center for Civil Liberties (CCL), which has been documenting Russian war crimes against the civilian population since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, was honored, as well as the Belarusian human rights activist Ales Byalyatski, founder of the human rights organization Vyazna, which supports politically persecuted people and prisoners.

Byalyatsky, who, unlike many Belarusian dissidents, stayed in the country, has been in prison since last summer.

Since Wjasna also operates internationally, he and his fellow detainees are accused of smuggling money.

Also precarious is the situation of the equally distinguished historical and human rights society Memorial in Russia, which was labeled a “foreign agent” in 2016 and was dissolved by the authorities at the end of last year.

Many Russian Memorial employees, such as Chairman of the Board Jan Ratschinsky, have remained in Russia and want to continue their legal scientific and legal protection activities, supported by sister organizations in other European countries.

Kerstin Holm

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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A co-founder of Memorial, the German studies scholar and historian Irina Scherbakowa, had to leave the country after receiving personal threats and is currently living in Germany.

Since 1999, Scherbakova, together with the writer Lyudmila Ulitzkaja, who has also emigrated, has organized the Memorial student competition entitled “The Man in History”, in which children from all over the country conducted historical research using living examples based on documented stories from their parents and grandparents.

The fact that an independent approach to the past, focused on individual experiences, was practiced and awarded in this way was a thorn in the side of those in power, who increasingly swore the younger generation to historical myths and the glorification of the state.

He had to be hired this year.

Tell the truth even if it's terrible

Memorial, which was formed at the end of the 1980s on the initiative of Andrei Sakharov, has taken on a Herculean task.

It was about commemorating the millions of victims of state terror, documenting their stories, compensating survivors, but also identifying perpetrators, Irina Scherbakowa recalls.

You finally wanted to tell the truth, even if it was terrible.

Of course, after the end of the Soviet Union, when many people lost their livelihoods, that was asking a lot.

In addition, greedy, antisocial new elites quickly formed who didn't want to look back, says Scherbakova.

But because there was no coming to terms with the past, there was no break with the past, which, as is becoming increasingly clear, continues to hold Russia tied up.

All the more impressive is what Memorial has achieved.

The researchers documented about 80,000 life stories of Gulag prisoners and politically persecuted people, including Jews, Germans, Balts and pro-independent Ukrainians.

They collected testimonies about the massacre of Polish officers in Katyn in 1940. Their archive lists documents about more than two million Ostarbeiter, most of them women.

They paid tribute to Gulag survivors at events and, since their state didn't do it, organized financial support for them.

And they collected documents on interrogations under torture and state executioners in archives that had become increasingly difficult to access since the late 1990s.

Because of his efforts to hold perpetrators accountable,

The Memorial people have inspired many young people with their city tours, film evenings, exhibitions of letters, self-made clothes, art objects from the Gulag, but above all with their incorruptibility.

Now Memorial is to have its donation-acquired building taken away by court order.

Hopefully the deserved prize can protect these heroes of our time.