Yet the anniversary invites reflection on something larger than the fate of one community: what happens to ordinary civilians when war transforms nationality, ethnicity or ancestry into grounds for suspicion.

Remembering such events requires historical precision. It also requires resisting the temptation to divide history too neatly into peoples who suffered and peoples who caused suffering. Governments wage wars and armies fight them, but civilians frequently inherit their consequences.

August 28, 1941: War, Invasion and Deportation

The sequence of events matters.

On June 22, 1941, Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union. Operation Barbarossa developed into one of the largest and most destructive military campaigns in modern history. German policy in the East went far beyond conventional military objectives: Hitler's government envisaged territorial conquest and racial domination, while German occupation policies contributed to the deaths of millions of Soviet prisoners of war and civilians.

The Soviet Union therefore confronted an existential threat. But that historical reality does not make every measure taken in response to the invasion defensible.

On August 28, 1941, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued the decree “On the Resettlement of Germans Living in the Volga Region.” The decree alleged that large numbers of saboteurs and spies existed among the German population of the Volga region and ordered the resettlement of the entire German population living there. The policy formed part of the wider wartime deportation and repression of Soviet Germans under Stalin's rule.

Mass deportation was accompanied by dispossession, family separation, forced labour and years of repression and restrictions. Berlin's official commemoration today places these events explicitly within their wartime context: Germany had attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, after which the Soviet leadership placed Germans living in the country under collective suspicion.

The distinction is essential. Germany bore responsibility for invading the Soviet Union. Soviet German civilians did not thereby acquire individual responsibility for Germany's invasion.

That difficult distinction lies at the heart of remembering civilians in wartime.

When Nationality Becomes Suspicion

War has a particular ability to change the meaning of identity. A nationality that was previously an ordinary part of someone's biography can suddenly become evidence of suspected loyalty to an enemy.

The Soviet experience was not unique.

Only months later, following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States embarked upon its own policy of collective suspicion. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 paved the way for the forced removal and incarceration of approximately 122,000 people of Japanese ancestry from the American West Coast. Nearly 70,000 were American citizens. The government brought no individual charges against them, and they had no meaningful opportunity to appeal their incarceration.

Decades later, the United States formally acknowledged the injustice. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 apologized and provided restitution to surviving Japanese Americans who had been incarcerated.

The Soviet deportations and Japanese American incarceration were not identical in scale, conditions, motivation or consequences. Their value as a comparison lies somewhere more specific: in both cases, wartime fear contributed to governments judging civilians collectively through their ancestry rather than individually through their conduct.

Comparing Without Equating

This distinction matters because not all civilian suffering in war has the same origins, purpose or legal and moral character.

The Holocaust, for example, cannot simply be placed alongside wartime internment or deportation as another instance of civilian suffering. European Jews were subjected to systematic persecution and extermination by Germany and its collaborators. Genocide, forced population transfer, internment, civilian casualties and displacement are historically and legally distinct phenomena.

To acknowledge these distinctions is not to rank human suffering. It is to understand history accurately.

Responsible remembrance therefore requires two things at once: recognizing patterns that recur across conflicts while refusing to erase the differences between them.

The Civilians War Leaves Behind

The battlefield is only one geography of war.

Another is the abandoned home, the refugee camp, the missing family member, the confiscated shop, the child growing up somewhere his or her parents never intended to live.

War can transform neighbours into categories. Once individuals cease to be perceived primarily as individuals, the distance between suspicion and collective punishment can become dangerously short.

And the consequences often survive the war itself. Armies demobilize and borders are redrawn, while displaced families continue living with loss, exile and inherited memory for generations.

The Difficult Question of Responsibility

None of this means that responsibility for war should become blurred.

States make decisions. Governments order invasions. Military commanders issue orders. Armed groups commit atrocities. Individuals commit crimes. These responsibilities should be established rather than hidden behind a vague assertion that "war is terrible for everyone."

But responsibility should also not automatically travel from a government to every citizen, from an army to an ethnic community, or from one generation to the next.

This is one of the most difficult principles to preserve during war: a civilian does not cease to be a civilian merely because a government or army associated with his or her nationality has committed aggression or atrocities.

International humanitarian law rests in significant part on maintaining distinctions between combatants and civilians and on protecting civilian populations from collective punishment and unlawful attack.

The Tragedy Continues Today

Eighty-five years after August 1941, these questions are not confined to history.

In Sudan, the scale of civilian displacement is immense. The United Nations reported this week that around 13 million people have fled their homes during the conflict, including approximately 8.7 million internally displaced people. Civilian deaths, sexual violence, abductions and other abuses continue to be reported.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, continuing fighting in the east is again forcing civilians from their homes. Recent clashes in South Kivu displaced more than 48,000 people from mid-July into early August, while insecurity and damaged infrastructure have obstructed healthcare and humanitarian assistance.

In Gaza, civilians continue to be killed and injured, while displacement, damaged infrastructure and severe humanitarian conditions continue to shape everyday life. UN reporting in August has again emphasized that civilians and civilian objects must be protected and that Gaza's population continues to face the consequences of prolonged hostilities.

In Myanmar, the Rohingya and other communities remain caught between armed conflict, displacement and severe restrictions. Nine years after the mass displacement of 2017, the United Nations reports continuing civilian deaths and grave abuses, including arbitrary arrests, forced recruitment and sexual violence involving multiple armed actors.

These conflicts are profoundly different. Their origins, governments, armed actors, histories and legal questions cannot responsibly be collapsed into a single narrative. Nor should historical events from 1941 be treated as equivalents of conflicts unfolding in 2026.

What connects them is narrower but no less important: ordinary people continue to bear the consequences of political and military struggles they frequently neither initiated nor control.

When Neighbours Become Enemies

Perhaps one of war's most dangerous transformations occurs when societies begin to see individuals principally as representatives of a nation, ethnicity, religion or political camp.

The neighbour becomes a representative of an enemy state. The colleague becomes a potential sympathizer. An accent, surname or ancestry acquires political meaning.

Cultural diplomacy has relevance precisely here. It cannot erase political responsibility or resolve every conflict. But it can help preserve communication between peoples when relations between governments deteriorate and defend the principle that political conflict need not become hostility between populations.

85 Years Later: What Have We Learned?

Today's commemoration at Berlin's Rotes Rathaus therefore represents more than the marking of a historical anniversary. Berlin's Governing Mayor Kai Wegner, Senator Cansel Kiziltepe, Federal Commissioner for Matters Related to Ethnic German Resettlers and National Minorities Bernd Fabritius, and Walter Gauks, Berlin's contact person for Germans from Russia, late repatriates and displaced persons, are among those participating in the central remembrance event. A wreath-laying at the memorial for Germans from Russia at Parkfriedhof Marzahn follows later in the day.

The commemoration forms part of Berlin's “Democracy Needs a Culture of Remembrance” programme, which seeks to connect historical memory with human dignity, democratic responsibility and social cohesion.

Remembering Stalin's deportation of Soviet Germans should not obscure what came before it. Germany invaded the Soviet Union and unleashed a catastrophic war whose consequences for the peoples of the Soviet Union were enormous.

But acknowledging Germany's responsibility does not require assigning that responsibility to every civilian of German ancestry who happened to live under Stalin's rule.

Both truths can stand together.

Walter Gauks has expressed a principle particularly relevant to this difficult history: injustice should be named and suffering acknowledged without setting the suffering of different groups against one another.

That may be the most valuable lesson August 28 can offer.

Historical memory should neither absolve aggressors nor manufacture inherited guilt. It should help societies understand how quickly war can transform identity into suspicion and suspicion into collective punishment.

Wars are decided by political leaders, governments, armies and armed groups. Their consequences, however, enter homes, families and neighbourhoods.

Eighty-five years after Stalin's deportation of Soviet Germans, remembering that history can therefore mean remembering something larger: the civilians every war leaves behind and the responsibility of every generation to prevent neighbours from becoming enemies.