On a lovely day after work, one of my friends here in Vinnytsia was walking with me from the university, and she was showing me various historical sites in the city. As we were leaving Gorky Park, where she told me the story of a massacre and graves of Stalin's victims buried there, she whispered, "Now I will show a police station where if you went in, you never came out." She was referring to the headquarters of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs or NKVD (Народный комиссариат внутренних дел - НКВД). The NKVD was the Stalin's secret police organization and was responsible for mass murders throughout the Soviet Union. The Vinnytsia branch of the NKVD was particularly ruthless and killed literally thousands of innocent civilians. These victims were buried in what is now Gorky Park and numerous other graves. There were at least 87 NKVD mass graves in and around Vinnytsia.
As we were approaching the building, she ever so discretely gestured toward it, and whispered, There it is." She was so discrete I needed clarification and pointed towards it asking, "Is that the building?"
She immediately, though gently, reprimanded me with fear in her voice admonishing, "Don't point! The police might be watching." Having come of age under Stalin and his repressive system, she still harbors many of the same fears that gripped her when she was living under the Soviet system. Her fears and behaviors are reflexive, but no longer really necessary. Today, the old NKVD building is still a police station, but it no longer houses the feared secret police organization that murdered millions of people.
Former NKVD Headquarters
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