The New York Times internet edition
September 24, 2001
Pope Pays Tribute to Victims of Soviet Atrocities
By REUTERS
Filed at 1:40 a.m. ET
ASTANA (Reuters) - Pope John Paul, speaking in a land that was once home to Stalinist gulags, paid moving tribute on Monday to the millions of people who suffered ridicule, imprisonment and death for their faith during the Soviet era.
The 81-year-old Pope, who lived through the Nazi occupation and later communist domination of his native Poland, made his tribute at a morning mass on the penultimate day of his trip to Kazakhstan.
The Pope, who moves on to Armenia on Tuesday, has been holding up relatively well, although at times he appears to be extremely tired.
His visit to the Central Asian republic so far has been dominated by his concerns that the world may slide into war following the attacks in the United States.
On Sunday he issued a pressing peace appeal from this sprawling mostly Muslin nation, whose southern border is only 200 miles from Afghanistan, base of the militant Osama bin Laden, who Washington holds responsible for the attacks.
Hours later, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced his country was ready to join a coalition of states to fight terrorism.
Speaking in Astana's Roman Catholic cathedral, which is smaller than most neighborhood parish churches in Italy, the Pope took his mind off the possibility of war for a moment and turned his attention to the grim past of the Soviet era.
``My thoughts turn at this time to your communities, once scattered and sorely tried. In heart and in spirit I relive the unspeakable trials of all those who suffered not only physical exile and imprisonment, but public ridicule and violence because they chose not to renounce their faith,'' he said in his sermon.
GOOD RELATIONS
Kazakhstan's some 180,000 Roman Catholics could squeeze into St. Peter's Square and its environs but the church enjoys good relations with the Muslim community of some 8 million.
Still, the Pope said the tiny community had its work cut out for it and compared their task to the rebuilding of the temple in ancient Jerusalem.
``After the communist oppression, you too -- not unlike exiles -- once more return to proclaim together your common faith. Today, ten years after regaining your freedom you remember the struggles of the past...I have long looked forward to today's meeting in order to share your joy,'' he said.
Kazakhstan was home to 16 of the many camps that made up the Gulag Archipelago, immortalized by Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his 1973 book.
More than two million people, including more than 900,000 ethnic Germans, were forced to migrate to Kazakhstan during Stalin's forced collectivization campaign, his crackdown on Catholics and banishing of peoples seen as ``unreliable.''
Historians say another 2.14 million people were sent to prison camps in the Karaganda area, where many perished from illness, hunger and sub-freezing temperatures.
Outside Astana, there once stood the ALZHIR camp, one of the most notorious in the archipelago, which was reserved for the wives of men considered ``enemies of the people'' by Stalin.
Modest obelisks and wooden crosses dot the endless, windswept steppe, where crumbling barracks and watchtowers stand as eerie reminders of past atrocities, some known only to God.
--Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov
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