International holidays - Day of the Young Anti-Fascist Hero

February 8 is the International Day of Young Anti-Fascist Hero, which has been celebrated since 1964 This date was not chosen by chance; it combines several bloody events that occurred in different years on the same day On February 8, 1943, in Paris, for refusing to hand over their underground comrades, the Nazis executed five boys who studied at the Beaufon Lyceum - Pierre Benoit, Jacques Baudry, Pierre Grelot, Jean Marie Argus and Lucien Legros From February 8 to 9 of the same year in the Lugansk region, after brutal torture, nine members of the anti-fascist organization “Young Guard” were shot Exactly twenty years later, in 1963, on February 8, at a rally of anti-fascists in Paris who opposed the war in Algeria, a French schoolboy, fifteen-year-old Daniel Fery, was killed A year later, in Baghdad, a boy, Fadil Jamal, who was a liaison for the Communist Party of Iraq, died on February 8 for refusing to hand over his comrades This holiday was introduced in memory of the young heroes who did not spare their lives in the fight against fascist ideology and its supporters In world history, fascism left a bright red trace of the blood of millions of people who became victims of this ideology The movement began relatively harmlessly, as a protest against democracy, rationalism and materialism The Fin de siecle generation created its ideology based on the works of the English naturalist Charles Darwin, the German thinker Friedrich Nietzsche, the French philosopher Henri Bergson and even the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky The ideas of these cultural figures simply began to take on a life of their own and be interpreted in different ways In many ways, the formation of the concept of the fascists was influenced by the image of the superman, first used by Nietzsche in his famous work “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” According to the philosopher, this creature should have surpassed modern man exactly as much as we have surpassed monkeys, that is, the difference in levels of development was as deep as an abyss The ideology of fascism is also based on the theory of social Darwinism Its supporters believed that the laws of natural selection and the struggle for survival also apply in human society Victory always remains with the one who is stronger, and the rest are subject to destruction, since there is no place for the weak in this world Such a concept perfectly justified any cruelty and gave carte blanche to the militarists - people who advocated waging any wars This theory was completely denied by Darwin himself, who introduced two key terms into science that are actively used by social Darwinists He believed that the laws of the animal world cannot be applied to human society One way or another, supporters of fascist ideas eventually came to believe that there is a special caste of people who are higher, better, stronger than others Only representatives of this carefully selected elite had the right to be in power, and the rest were subjected to total destruction or used as free labor Skin color, nose shape, hair shade, eye shape - any of these factors could become a reason for degrading a person to the status of “cattle” Although the supporters of fascism, who tried to build their own empire of “supermen” on human bones, were defeated, defeat is not destruction Many fascist ideas turned out to be extremely tenacious, which is why they are still actively used today by nationalists, militarists, racists, anti-communists and anti-liberalists “Young Guard” is an anti-fascist underground organization that operated during the Great Patriotic War in the Lugansk region (then called Voroshilovgrad) It consisted of seventy-one people The youngest was fourteen years old, and fifty-five of them never turned nineteen The organization was multinational Its members included Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Moldovans Young Guards distributed leaflets with real information about the state of affairs at the front and carried out sabotage, repelled prisoners of war and cut telephone wires, stole livestock and contaminated grain that was stored for the Germans They set fire to the German labor exchange, where there were lists of people who were supposed to be driven to Germany The Young Guards planned to organize an uprising to destroy the German garrison and join the Soviet troops To do this, they spent a long time and painstakingly collecting weapons, ammunition, and grenades, but the organization was discovered Initially, the organization's commissioner, Viktor Tretyakevich, was found guilty of disclosing the lists of participants, but 17 years later he was completely acquitted Another participant, Gennady Pocheptsov, turned out to be the true traitor He was convicted and executed in 1943 along with two accomplices As witnesses later wrote, the soldiers barely managed to recapture him from an angry crowd of local residents, among whom was his mother, who demanded that she be given a rifle so that she could personally shoot her son The executions of the Young Guard took place between January and February They were tortured to death - their bones were broken, their arms and legs were cut off, their eyes and skin were burned out, shoe needles were driven under their nails The police chief's office, where the executions were carried out, resembled a slaughterhouse because of the traces of blood Most of the Young Guards, after cruel torture, were thrown into the pit of one of the Krasnodon mines Some were shot beforehand, and some were thrown out alive To make sure no one got out, German soldiers dropped grenades and several heavy mining carts from above The rest of the Young Guards were shot in the forest in February Soviet troops liberated Krasnodon over the following weeks and already on February 14, the mutilated bodies of Young Guard members began to be removed from the pit Some of them had to be obtained only after a month After being identified by the remains of clothing, the Young Guards were reburied with honors in a mass grave Today, many journalists and writers are skeptical about the activities of the underground organization - they did nothing, did not influence the course of the war In fact, the true feat of the Krasnodon boys and girls was accomplished after the arrests, when, having survived inhuman torture, they remained human until the very end at an abandoned pit, where the mutilated guys supported those who could not stand