How Is It Remembered?

Visitors enter the forest cemetery through the Gate of Memory and are greeted by the iron Weeping Wall, bearing the names of the dead and surrounded by massive iron crosses, whose red color symbolizes the blood of the thousands of victims who were buried on these grounds. The Complex is divided into two parts, reflecting the different time periods when Russian and Polish victims were executed. In the part of the cemetery where Polish officers were buried, iron cast plaques engraved with the names of the soldiers and their dates of execution stretch out on a paved walkway.

Visitors walk along an Alley of Memory to four mass graves containing the remains of 5,100 inhabitants of the Tver region who were executed during the 1930s, as well as the graves of 296 Soviet soldiers who died during World War II in evacuation hospitals and in medical battalions near Mednoe. Laminated photographs of victims are pinned on trees and decked with black memorial ribbon, while small wooden and stone memorials dot the cemetery, marking the burial grounds. “Viewpoint,” a permanent outdoor exhibit made up of paintings, graphic art, sculpture and other architectural forms, displays preserved photographs, letters and other materials from Tver residents and Polish victims who died in the 1940 massacre.

Inside the Mednoe Memorial Complex Museum, art installations and documentary exhibits depict stories of how individual peasants, local families, clergy, and NKVD officers - persecutors and victims alike - experienced political repression. The Museum’s displays, together with its video documentaries and oral histories, help visitors explore the difficult experience of life under a totalitarian regime and make connections to their own role in preventing future abuses of state power.

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How Is It Remembered?