September Anniversaries

In Memory of the Victims of Nazism, Fascism and Japanese Militarism

– Pauline Easton –

Partisan unit near Krasnik, Poland, circa 1943.

During September, we commemorate several important anniversaries related to World War II. We recall the death-defying deeds and courage of the peoples of occupied countries and the Allied nations who joined their fight to vanquish German Nazism, Italian fascism and Japanese militarism. We pay deepest respects to the victims of these scourges of humankind. Since 1962, the International Day of Memory of Victims of Fascism is marked on the second Sunday of September to commemorate the victims of Nazism, fascism and Japanese militarism and all those who have been victims of their descendants since World War II, including at this time. This year it will be marked on September 8.

On September 1, 1939, the German Nazis invaded Poland. The Nazi invasion of Poland signalled the beginning of World War II and of the European holocaust.

In China on September 2, the people celebrate the defeat of the Japanese occupation of China in 1945, the date on which Japan formally signed its surrender in World War II. The Japanese invaded China on July 7, 1937. Their invasion unleashed the Asian holocaust about which Canadian media remains largely silent.

The Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanjing, was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanjing in the Second Sino-Japanese War, by the Imperial Japanese Army. Beginning on December 13, 1937, the massacre lasted for six weeks. The Japanese militarists committed atrocities such as permitting mass rape, looting and arson. The massacre has gone down in history as one of the worst atrocities committed in the 20th century.

Left: Chinese civilian victims of the Nanjing Massacre, 1937. Right: Parade in Chonqing celebrates victory over Japan, September 3, 1945.

In their maniacal drive to condemn Russia and the People’s Republic of China as “authoritarian regimes,” Canada’s Prime Minister and the government of Canada and media remain silent about who liberated China from these monstrous deeds and the role of the Soviet Union in liberating Europe. Despite the tremendous sacrifices endured by the peoples of the occupied countries and their liberators, the government of Canada and the media in the service of the U.S. striving for world domination are purveyors of criminal disinformation about what actually took place, who were the victims and the significance of those events today.

World War II involved 61 nation-states and over 80 per cent of the world’s population, taking a toll of more than 55 million people. Hostilities occurred on the territories of 40 states and the vast basins of the Atlantic, Arctic, Pacific and Indian Oceans.

The Soviet Union sustained the biggest losses in people and material resources. It suffered the loss of some 27 million people, in addition to losses to its armed forces of some 8.7 million people. China is estimated to have endured the second-highest number of total casualties in World War II. As many as 20 million people died in China in the Asian Holocaust, including up to 3.75 million military deaths and 18.19 million civilian deaths.

Evermore people have lost their lives since World War II as a result of the U.S. imperialist striving for domination of the world’s resources, labour, zones for investment and influence. That number continues to rise exponentially following the end of the bipolar division of the world in 1990. Since 2005, on the initiative of the Russian Federation, every year the UN General Assembly has approved resolutions urging an end to the glorification of Nazism and urging member states to combat practices that exacerbate contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

The General Assembly through these resolutions has expressed its deep concern over attempts to glorify Nazism, neo-Nazism and former members of the Waffen-SS in any form, including the construction of monuments and the holding of public demonstrations. The resolutions express concern over the “recurring attempts to desecrate or demolish monuments erected in remembrance of those who fought against Nazism during World War II, as well as to unlawfully exhume or remove the remains of such persons.” The resolutions also note an alarming increase in racist incidents and violence globally. The situation has reached the point of making genocide under the auspices of the U.S. and its NATO partners and Zionist Israel “the new normal” in Palestine while they are also responsible for mass starvation and migration as a result of the wars they have instigated and conditions they enforce on the countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

The memory of those who gave their lives in the fight for freedom, peace and democracy lives on in the battle of current generations for a world free of the scourge of the aggression and genocide we see today carried out by the Anglo-U.S. and European powers in the name of high ideals.

The need to establish anti-war governments all over the world has never been greater. Let us do our duty to the victims of Nazism, fascism and Japanese militarism and make sure we make Canada a zone for peace.

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