SOVIET WAR MEMORIAL TREPTOWER PARK

Description

Essentials about the Soviet War Memorial Treptower Park in brief

After the victorious end of World War II, four Soviet memorials were erected by the Red Army in the urban area of Berlin. These were intended to commemorate all Red Army soldiers killed during the war, but especially the approximately 80,000 Soviet soldiers who died in the conquest of Berlin. The site in Treptower Park is the central and also the largest memorial to the Red Army in Berlin.

The Soviet War Memorials in Berlin

The four memorials are not only monuments to the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, but also serve as military cemeteries. The central memorial in Berlin is the site in Treptow Park. Covering an area of around nine hectares, the Treptow Memorial is also the largest of its kind in Germany. Here, 7,000 Red Army soldiers found their final resting place.

The grounds of the Soviet War Memorial Treptower Park

Visitors can enter the Soviet Memorial in Treptower Park from both the north and the south. In each case, a round-arched portal leads into the symmetrical complex. The paths meet on the forecourt, where the three-meter-high sculpture Mother Homeland stands – an allegory of a woman mourning her fallen sons. An avenue of mourning birch trees leads visitors past two red granite flags to the grove of honor itself. In the middle of this grove there are five lawns under which 4,800 fallen are buried.

Along the common graves there are sixteen limestone sarcophagi symbolizing the 16 Soviet republics. They are decorated on the long sides with reliefs from the history of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Peoples and bear quotes from Josef Stalin on the narrow side. The memorial is dominated by the 12-meter-high statue of a Soviet soldier standing on the mausoleum hill, carrying a child on his arm and lowering his sword over a smashed swastika. The statue rises above a walk-in pavilion, the dome of which contains a mosaic with a Russian inscription.