A Russian nonprofit organization has built a replica World War II prison camp through a presidential grant for children’s patriotic education, local media in northern Russia has reported.
When it opens in the republic of Karelia on the Finnish border in December, schoolchildren will be able to roam the guard towers, barracks and barbed wire that Finland’s army set up for Soviet civilians fleeing the frontlines.
“We hope to see the former young prisoners here too,” said Natalia Abramova, who heads the Otkrytye Vozmozhnosti (Open Opportunities) NGO for disabled children that erected the camp.
“They’ll be able to share their memories with the children,” Abramova told the Karelia affiliate of the Rossia state broadcaster on the camp grounds in a village 700 kilometers north of Moscow.
She added that young visitors will also take part in “military-patriotic games” and “lessons in courage” as part of the “Patriotic Weekend” attraction.
The NGO won a $36,000 presidential grant to open the camp, which uses the set of a 2019 state-funded movie that tells the story of children who were interned at the camps.
Historians say around 4,000 Soviet civilians, including children, women and the elderly, perished in the several transfer camps that Finland opened between 1941-44.
Karelia’s mock camp is the latest example of modern-day Russia’s efforts to pass on Soviet and wartime history to the next generation. President Vladimir Putin, who has long promoted patriotism as Russia’s sole national idea and established a military-patriotic youth movement in 2015, added patriotism and war history to the Russian school curriculum earlier this year.
Authorities are pursuing “aggressive, militaristic politics of memory,” historians who oppose the project told the U.S.-funded RFE/RL news outlet, which profiled the camp in March.
“War is not a children’s show, but a very serious thing,” Mikhail Goldenberg, director of the Karelia National Museum, told the outlet at the time.
(c) The Moscow Times
“Historians say around 4,000 Soviet civilians, including children, women and the elderly, perished in the several transfer camps that Finland opened between 1941-44.”
If Muscovy want to pass on Soviet history to the sheep, why not build a replica gulag where millions died under Stalin, not a few thousand?
I swear these Putinazis will never leave 1945.
They have selective memory when it comes to history.
And never remember 1939-1941, and their alliance with Hitler-Germany!
Maybe they will have shops on this site, where the kids can queue up for 6 hours, and find there is nothing the buy. 😂
The good old days of Communism, 25 years in queue for a Lada 🙂
30 years for one with brakes. LMAO
Q: What’s the difference between a Lada and a golf ball?
A: You can drive a golf ball 200 metres .
How do we know that Adam and Eve were Soviet citizens? They had one apple between the two of them, they had no clothes, and they believed they were living in paradise.
😀 😀 😀
Ordinary ruskies had no access to items such as apples, they must have been KGB. 😂
Good one!
Our Lada drove from Århus to Odesa and back five times. Sadly it was not the motor that was bad, but the body. When Suzanna crashed into a Mercedes she had no chance to survive. I should sue Lada for producing such trash. 😡
It was an old Fiat construction from the 60’s, a lot has changed since then on protecting the passengers.
PS Yesterday I was fined again, 2800 kr for driving in 135 in a 110 km zone 😉
Don’t do it like Suzanna. Even a Volvo will be as flat as a pancake when kissing a truck. 😕