Soviet War Memorial inTreptower Park, Berlin
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Mirtilli
N 52° 29.179 E 013° 28.293
33U E 396215 N 5816228
The Soviet War Memorial (sometimes translated as the Soviet Cenotaph), is a vast war memorial and military cemetery in Berlin's Treptower Park. It was built to the design of the Soviet architect Yakov Belopolsky to commemorate 5,000 of the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin in April-May 1945. It opened four years after the war ended on May 8, 1949, and served as the central war memorial of East Germany.
Waymark Code: WM6KPV
Location: Berlin, Germany
Date Posted: 06/16/2009
Views: 75
The focus of the ensemble is a monument by Soviet sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich: a 12-m tall monument of a Soviet soldier with a sword holding a child, standing over a broken swastika. Vuchetich's inspiration for the monument was Soviet soldier Nikolai Masalov (1922-2004), who on April 30, 1945 found a German girl wandering near Potsdamer Platz during the Battle of Berlin and brought her to safety. Despite rumors that this episode was Soviet propaganda, owing to a journalist use of a different name for the girl's rescuer,[1] officially confirmed documents exist that substantiate at least five cases of Russian soldiers delivering small German children to orphanages during the Battle of Berlin. The base of the statue contains a small room lined in mosaics, in which wreaths are usually laid.
Before the monument is a central area lined on both sides by 16 stone sarcophagi, one for each of the 16 Soviet Republics (in 1940-1956 then up to the reorganization of the Karelo-Finnish SSR into the Karelian ASSR there were 16 "union republics") with relief carvings of military scenes and quotations from Joseph Stalin, on one side in Russian, on the other side the same text in German. The area is the final resting place for some 5000 soldiers of the Red Army.
At the opposite end of the central area from the statue is a portal consisting of a pair of stylized Soviet flags clad in marble recovered from Adolf Hitler's demolished Reich Chancellery. (Leftover marble was allegely used to line Mohrenstraße station on the Berlin U-Bahn, adjacent to the former chancellery.) These are flanked by two statues of kneeling soldiers.
Beyond the flag monuments is a further sculpture, along the axis formed by the soldier monument, the main area, and the flags, is another figure, of the Motherland weeping at the loss of her sons.
In recent years, the ensemble has undergone a thorough renovation. In 2003 the main statue was removed and sent to a workshop on the island of Rügen for refurbishment. It was replaced on May 4, 2004.
President Vladimir Putin laying a wreath to the monument to the Soviet liberator soldier in Treptow Park
Negative perception in Germany
Women of the (East) German wartime generation still refer to it as the "tomb of the unknown rapist" in response to the mass rapes by Red Army soldiers in the years following 1945.
The text has been copied from Wikipedia
Date of Dedication: 01/05/1949
Property Permission: Public
Access instructions: S-bahn to Treptower Park station and then walk app.700 m
Access times: From: 12:00 AM To: 11:59 PM
Website for Waymark: [Web Link]
Location of waymark:
Am Teptower Park
Berlin, Berlin Germany
12435
Commemoration: commemorate 5,000 of the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin in April-May 1945.
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Visit Instructions:
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