Šķaune Memorial to the Red Army Soldiers and Partisans at the Warriors' Cemetery, Šķaune, Latvian SSR, USSR 1978 -- Daily LIFT #995
A memorial to the Red Army soldiers who liberated Latvia from the Nazis. Shamefully many of these memorials have been torn down in Eastern Europe by far right governments attempting to erase the sacrifices of all the Soviet peoples in WWII and falsely claim that these are, in fact, "Russian" war memorials.
This is false and this monument is a perfect example of just how false. Millions of people from all the many nationalities of the USSR died in the war against fascism. In the case of Šķaune it was there that in July, 1944 the Red Army's 43rd Guards Rifle Division known as the "Latvian Guards" due to the fact that it was almost entirely made up of Latvians crossed into Latvia and began its liberation.
It was a memorial to those brave soldiers who gave their lives.
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