The Second World War took 70 million lives. On 7 September 2024, for the 79th anniversary of its end and the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Fascism, we gathered where Vienna has carved that memory in stone — at the Heroes of the Red Army Monument on Schwarzenbergplatz.
Compatriots and local residents came, and motorcyclists rode in from Austria, Slovakia, Germany and Switzerland. And when darkness fell, a screen lit up at the foot of the monument.
Silence first
The evening began with a minute of silence. Flowers were laid on the steps of the monument and candles were lit — one for each of those whose names have long since become numbers in textbooks.
An escape that is hard to believe
Then the film “Devyataev” began — the story of the Soviet pilot Mikhail Devyatayev. Taken prisoner by the Germans, he resolved on a daring escape: he seized a German bomber and flew off the secret island where the V-2 rockets were being developed.
A story that is hard to believe unless you know it is true ran with German subtitles — beneath a column that Vienna sees every day but does not hear every day what it stands for.
On evenings like this, the monument on Schwarzenbergplatz stops being just part of the cityscape and becomes once again what it was meant to be — a place of remembrance.
