A tribute to
80,000 Red Army soldiers who died in the Battle of Berlin 1945. Soviet
Architect Yakov Belopolsky’s design was unveiled just four years after
World War II ended, and its epic scale and brawny symbolism made it a
vast war memorial military cemetery in Berlin's Treptower Park, one of
three Soviet memorials built in Berlin after the end of the war.
Photo Credit Leif Hinrichsen
On entering you are greeted by two kneeling soldiers, and the view
unfolds across a geometrical expanse flanked by 16 stone sarcophagi,
which mark the burial of 5,000 Soviet soldiers who
died in the final Battle of Berlin in spring 1945. The focus of the
ensemble is a monument by Soviet sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich: a 12-m tall
statue of a Soviet soldier with a sword holding a German child,
standing over a broken swastika. According to Marshal of the Soviet
Union Vasily Chuikov, the Vuchetich statue commemorates the deeds of
Sergeant of Guards Nikolai Masalov, who during the final storm on the
center of Berlin risked his life under heavy German machine-gun fire to
rescue a three-year-old German girl whose mother had apparently
disappeared.
This was a great achievement of the Soviet people to
the history of mankind". 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 built of red granite. 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.
Photo Credit Tarkowski
Photo Credit A_Peach
Photo Credit Santiago Montecruz
Photo Credit James Higgott
Rear of the Soviet Memorial arch. Photo Credit Ben Garrett
Photo Credit Mehmet Rifat Öcal
Soviet military relief. Photo Credit Dom Pates
Soviet War Memorial in December. Photo Credit Felipe Tofani
Photo Credit Leif Hinrichsen
Photo Credit Jan Hazevoet
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