Schönholzer Heide Soviet Cemetery, Berlin, Germany

The least accessible and least known of the three major Soviet memorials in Berlin can be found in the Pankow district, in the north of the city.

The cemetery was designed by a team including the architects Konstantin A. Solovyev, M. Belarnzev and W.D. Korolyev and the sculptor Ivan G. Pershutchev and was constructed between 1947 and 1949. It covers and area of almost 30,000 m² (around 7 acres) and holds the remains of around 13,000 of the 80,000 Red Army soldiers who were killed in the fighting for Berlin in April and May 1945. On either side of the main entrance is an inscription, in German on one side and Russian on the other, which reads “Uncover your head. Here in eternal sleep rest Soviet soldiers – heroes of the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945. They gave their lives for your happiness.”

The paths through the main area of the cemetery are flanked on either side by 8 sarcophagi, holding a total of 1,182 bodies, and a further 2,647 bodies are buried in graves along the outer walls. A 33-metre obelisk stands at the far end of the cemetery, with a fairly typical representation of the motherland mourning her lost sons at its base. A number of officers and highly decorated soldiers are buried in  base of the obelisk.

 

 

 

The entire complex underwent extensive renovations between 2011 and 2013. To get to the cemetery, take the S1 to Wilhelmsruh station. At the bottom of the stairs down from the platform, take the exit on the left onto Kopenhagener Straße. After about 300 m, turn right onto Niederstraße. At the end of this short residential street, there is a playing field. Walk around it on the right-hand side and you’ll soon see the wall of the cemetery on your left. The main entrance is at the far end.

Also in and around Berlin:

• Treptower Park Memorial Complex
• Tiergarten Memorial
• Seelow Heights Museum and Memorial Cemetery

 

Place de la Bataille de Stalingrad, Paris, France

Place de la Bataille de Stalingrad is a small and fairly nondescript junction in the 19th Arondissement in the northeastern part of Paris. Part of Boulevard de la Villette was renamed Place de Stalingrad in 1945, and the name was changed to Place de la Bataille de Stalingrad in 1993. In 1946, the Metro station Aubervilliers – Boulevard de la Villette was renamed Stalingrad. The square is located at one end of Bassin de la Villette, the largest artificial lake in the city.

There is a small memorial to the battle in the square, but one has to look hard to find it. It’s a small stone that stands (along with similar stones dedicated to the Battles of Verdun and Bir Hakeim) beside a tree between the Rotunda restaurant and the street. There is also a small plaque about the battle on the wall on the platform of the metro station. The Stalingrad metro station is on lines 2, 5 and 7. A few businesses around the square, ranging from a medical biology laboratory to a tattoo and piercing shop, have taken the Stalingrad name.

Perekop, Crimea, Ukraine

Crimea has hit the headlines in the last few weeks, so I thought I’d post a few pictures that I took on on the Perekop Isthmus, the narrow neck of land that joins the Crimean Peninsula to the mainland of Ukraine, during a brief stop on a bus trip from Odessa to Feodosia in 2008:

The text on the plaque in the photo above left reads “Command point of Marshal of the Soviet Union V. M. Vasilevskii and General of the Army F. I. Tolbukhin during the period of the storming of Perekop, 8 April 1944”.  The ISU-152 assault gun and M30 howitzer in the second photo are situated beside the railway line by a monument at the Tatar Ditch, a trench line across one of the narrowest parts of the isthmus that was originally dug in the 17th century and was reinforced in 1941 against the German attack.

The two monuments below are located along the ditch, and commemorate events during both the Russian Civil War and the Great Patriotic War. The text on the monument in the photo on the right reads “Ai Monai Position. Here in 1919, parts of the Red Army fought with the White Guards and the Interventionists. From December 1941 – May 1942, forces of the 51st, 44th, and 47th armies heroically fought against the German-fascist invaders.”

T-34 Restoration Documentary

Wargaming.net, the Belarussian company behind the hugely popular online game World of Tanks, has produced a nice video about the restoration of a T-34/76 by a team at the Stalin Line museum complex outside Minsk:

“Glory” Memorial, Tiraspol, Transdniester

Tiraspol’s main war memorial commemorates the dead of the Great Patriotic War, the Afghanistan War and the Transdniestran War of 1990-2. Not unusually, the centrepiece of the memorial is a T-34/85.

There are also a number of individual and mass graves, and a Grave of the Unknown Soldier (below). The inscription reads: “Имя твое неизвестно, подвиг твои бессмертен. Неизвестному солдату.” This means “Your name is unknown, your deed is immortal. Unknown soldier.”

The memorial is located opposite the government building on 25th October Street (ул. 25 Октября), one of the main routes through the centre of Tiraspol.

Also in Tiraspol:

• Students and Teachers Memorial

“Sapun Ridge” Diorama Museum, Sevastopol, Ukraine

Sapun Ridge (Сапун-Гора) is a 240-m-tall ridge that provides a strong defensive position to the southeast of Sevastopol city centre. During the assault on Sevastopol in May 1944, it was defended by the German 5th Korps, but the 51st Army broke the defences on May 7, leaving the route into the city clear. The last German resistance in the Crimea ended on the Khersonneses peninsula to the west of the city centre on May 12.

Photo from Wikipedia Commons, by Cmapm

The 25-by-5-metre diorama painting was created by a team from the Grekov War Artists’ Studio in Moscow, led by P.T.Maltseva, and the museum first opened on November 4, 1959.

In 1970, a 28-metre-tall memorial obelisk commemorating the liberation of Sevastopol was constructed and an eternal flame was lit.

The area around the museum contains a large collection of military hardware, including tanks, artillery, a torpedo boat and some reconstructions of the German defensive trenches.

The museum opens from 9:00 to 5:00 every day except Monday (last admission at 4:30). In July and August, it opens every day from 9:00 to 5:30 (last admission at 5:00). The admission price is 50 UAH (about €5.00). By public transport, the museum can be reached by taking trolleybus 1, 7 or 17 to the Malakhov Kurgan (Малахов Курган) stop and then taking bus no. 20 or marshrutka no. 107.

Also in Sevastopol:

• Museum of the Black Sea Fleet
• Memorial to the Heroic Defenders of Sevastopol
• Soldier and Sailor Memorial
• Armoured Train “Zheleznyakov”

Stalingrad Guidebook

My good friend Svetlana has written a great English-language guidebook that covers the Stalingrad battlefield and many other sites and activities in Volgograd and the surrounding region. The book has full coverage of all the main memorials and locations that are associated with the battle, practical advice on where to stay and eat, ideas for trips outside the city and a little bit of the wider history of Tsaritsyn-Stalingrad-Volgograd.

Check out the website at http://mishatkina.wix.com/volgostalingradguide

It is also available on ebay:  http://www.ebay.com/itm/Volgograd-Stalingrad-Tsaritsyn-Travel-Guide-by-S-Kostrykina-2015-paperback-/171786956618?ssPageName=ADME%3AL%3ALCA%3AUS%3A1123

Franz Grinkevich Memorial, Donetsk, Ukraine

This memorial in the centre of Donetsk commemorates Colonel Franz A. Grinkevich, who commanded the 32nd Guards Tank Brigade, one of the units that liberated the city, which was then known as Stalino.

Grinkevich was killed on October 11, 1943, in the village of Kharkovo, in the Zaporizhia region to the southwest of Donetsk. Some of his men brought his body back to Stalino and built a tomb with his T-34/76 tank on top. In 1964, the pedestal was enlarged and the tank was later replaced by a T-34/85. Grinkevich’s original tank is now on display at the nearby Monument to the Liberators of the Donbass.

The inscription on the front of the pedestal reads “Вечная слава героям, павшим в боях за свободу и независимость нашей Родины. 1941—1945,” which means “Eternal glory to the heroes who fell in battle for the freedom and independence of our Motherland, 1941-1945.”

The monument stands on Artema Street (вул. Артема), Donetsk’s main central boulevard, close to the Opera and Drama Theatre and the Donbass Palace hotel.

Also in Donetsk:

• Monument to the Liberators of the Donbass

Reenactors, St. Petersburg, Russia

I happened to be passing through St. Petersburg on September 8, 2011, the 70th anniversary of the fall of Schlisselburg, which severed the last overland connection into Leningrad and began the 872-day siege. I spotted these reenactors on Nevskiy Prospekt. I don’t know where they were headed, but they weren’t going to get there in a hurry as the traffic was completely gridlocked.

Also in St. Petersburg:

• Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad

Liberation Monument, Chisinau, Moldova

Chisinau came under Soviet control on June 28, 1940, with the annexation of the previously Romanian-held regions of Bessarabia and Bukovina and the subsequent formation of the Moldavian SSR. On November 10, 1940, the city suffered significant damage from a 7.4-magnitude earthquake that had its epicentre at Vrancea, about 150 miles to the southwest. Further damage was inflicted by German air raids in the first days of Operation Barbarossa, and the city was captured on July 17 by the German 50th and 72nd Divisions and the Romanian 1st Armoured Division.

The Red Army’s first attempt at retaking the region was launched in the Spring of 1944, but made little progress against strong German defences. The second Jassy-Kishinev Offensive (Kishinev is the Russian name for Chisinau) was launched by the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts on August 20, 1944. This time, the defensive lines were quickly breached, and on August 23, a coup d’etat led by King Michael deposed the Romanian administration led by Marshal Antonescu, leading to the country’s defection from the Axis and opening the way for Soviet attacks into the Balkans. Chisinau was retaken by 5th Shock Army on August 24 and was reinstalled as the capital of the Moldavian SSR.

The monument was built by the architect Vladimir Naumov and the sculptor Lazar Dubinovskiy and replaces an earlier version, featuring a soldier holding a PPSh submachine gun aloft, similar to the Liberation Memorial in Kharkov. The Chisinau memorial, however, quickly developed cracks and collapsed in 1968. The replacement bronze statue features a soldier holding a sword and a representation of the goddess of victory. It stands on a small square in front of the Chisinau Hotel and the Moldovan Academy of Sciences, at the intersection of Constantin Negruzzi Boulevard and Ciuflea Street. Apologies for the poor quality of my photos, it was dusk on a cloudy day when I visited.

Also in Chisinau:

• “Eternity” Memorial