Schiller Institute on YouTube Schiller Institute on Facebook RSS

Home >

‘Immortal Regiment’ Marches to Honor Those Who Fought, And Fight, Against Fascism

May 2016


View full size
Alfred Korby, World War II veteran, speaks at the New York City 'Immortal Regiment' march of the necessity for economic and scientific cooperation between the United States and Russia to avoid war. May 7, 2016.

View full size
Schiller Institute organizers participate in the Immortal Regiment celebrations in New York, honoring the relatives who perished defeating fascism in the war. Right to left: Michelle Fuchs, Margaret Greenspan, Roger Ham.

Tens of millions of people in hundreds of cities across the planet marched this May 7-9, carrying placards with pictures of their fallen relatives from World War II, to honor those who gave their lives to defeat fascism. These so-called "Immortal Regiment" activities, which began in 2012 in the Russian city of Tomsk, had some 12 million participants in Russia last year, including President Vladimir Putin carrying a picture of his father, a veteran of the siege of Leningrad. The "Immortal Regiment" had its first American participation in 2015 in New York City, and it is now spreading rapidly around the world.

This year’s marches in the U.S. included the prominent participation of the Schiller Institute and the LaRouche movement, led by LaRouche’s flagship Manhattan Project in New York City. A TASS wire reported that, on May 7, more than 500 people marched along the Hudson River waterfront from Battery Park to the memorial for the victims of World War II, and quoted extensively from three Schiller Institute organizers, Alfred Korby (a 91-year-old World War II veteran), Roger Ham, and Michelle Fuchs. "We don’t need any more wars, and for that we must cooperate to develop space and new lands, and make scientific discoveries," TASS quotes Korby stating. "Americans should unite with Russians, both physically and spiritually, in ideas, and only then will there be no more wars."

Other U.S. cities holding marches included Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Orlando, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Paris and Strasbourg marched on May 8; London and Berlin on May 9. Buenos Aires was the first South American city to join the march, with 80 participants on May 7. Beijing also held its first "Immortals" march on May 7.


View full size
LaRouche movement organizers at the Immortal Regiment celebrations, Houston, Texas.

Russia celebrated Victory Day on May 9. A fifth of all Russians polled by the Levada Center, reported that they intended to participate in this year’s Immortal Regiment marches.

Lyndon LaRouche commented that this process must now echo across the entire United States, and achieve a coherent, unified approach to stopping today’s drive for fascism and war by the British Empire and their pawn Obama. "We must use this as the basis for more action," he stated.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche elaborated on how to stop the growing drive for fascism today.

"You have this danger of a new fascism," she said, "and it is very much associated with an image of Man." Fascism’s image of man is racist; it is associated with the idea that "blood and soil" define national identity; and it is based on geopolitics. "It’s associated with evoking a certain kind of emotion, like rage. People are becoming desperate about their own perspective for their own life. You have people who appeal to the sense of insecurity, frustration and especially rage, and that is what is turning potentially fascist populations into fascist populations." Political phenomena like Alternative for Germany party and Donald Trump in the U.S. are "just pitching to the rage in the population against the Establishment," Zepp-LaRouche stated.


View full size

Immortal Regiment celebrations, San Francisco, California.
LaRouche movement organizers at the Immortal Regiment celebrations in Washington, D.C. The young man with the flowers was in tears thanking LaRouche movement organizer Karen Nafziger (center) for carrying the picture of Alexander Prokhorenko.

"That leaves you with a very difficult situation, and it makes it all the more important that we immediately, in the organizing, bring in the highest level conception of the image of Man, as an antidote. The organizing has to reproduce—in an instant, if possible—the effect of the Palmyra concert. In other words, snatch people out of the lower areas where they normally think, and somehow catapult them to the highest level of thinking, and the image of Man associated with the humanist idea of Man."