The Alberta government on Friday honoured victims of the Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler regimes. The national day of remembrance is called Black Ribbon Day and is marked by Europe, as well. On Aug. 23, 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany agreed in what is known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to not to attack each other. Days later, Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, triggering the Second World War. Jackie Armstrong-Homeniuk, Alberta’s parliamentary secretary for settlement services and Ukrainian evacuees, in her remarks at the legislature on Friday, called the events that followed Aug. 23, 1939, “one of the darkest chapters in human history.” “Throughout my riding of Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville, the history of central and eastern European settlement is woven into our churches, cultural organisations, family stories, and community life. Many families came to Alberta seeking freedoms they had been denied everywhere else,” she said, noting similarities in the stories she hears from Ukrainian refugees. “I look around the room, and I go, ‘You are fulfilling what we were asked to do,’ and that is to remember and learn our history,” added John Szumlas, honorary consul of the Republic of Poland. According to the consulate, two million Poles were taken out of Poland by Germany. About 500,000 survived. Szumlas, too, dedicated part of his remarks to Ukraine on Friday. “Here we are, 87 years later, and notwithstanding mankind’s pledge, ‘never again,’ we have, for 1,640 days, witnessed children stolen from their families, innocent women, children, and men being killed by another madman of Moscow,” he said. “I believe that we all have an enormous responsibility to ensure that the memories and experiences (of those) who lived through the nightmares, sadly, are not lost.” The ceremony also consisted of performances by Ukrainian bandurist Oksana Kolomiiets, who moved to Canada from Ukraine in 2023. Canada made Aug. 23 a national day of remembrance in 2009.
