23 August – The European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism (Black Ribbon Day) – linked to the Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939 for the division of Eastern Europe

Today, August 23, 2024, we commemorate the victims of totalitarianism and authoritarian regimes.
The European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism (Black Ribbon Day) is linked to the date of the signing of the non-aggression treaty between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany (known as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, or as the Stalin-Hitler Pact).

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union with a secret protocol that partitioned between them or managed the sovereignty of the states in Central and Eastern Europe: Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Romania.

The pact was signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. It has also been referred to as the Hitler–Stalin Pact and the Nazi–Soviet Pact.