Soviet War Memorial, Treptower Park, Berlin

Soviet War Memorial in Berlin

In Berlin’s Treptower Park you will find a Soviet War Memorial designed by the Soviet architect Yakov Belopolsky to commemorate 7,000 of the 80,000 Red Army soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin in April–May 1945. It opened four years after World War II on 8th May 1949.

The monument is one of three Soviet memorials built in Berlin after the end of the war. The other two memorials are the Tiergarten memorial, the Soviet War Memorial Schönholzer Heide in Berlin’s Pankow district. These memorials are not only commemorative but also serve as cemeteries for those killed.

As part of the Two Plus Four Agreement, Germany agreed to assume maintenance and repair responsibility for all war memorials in the country, including the Soviet memorial in Treptower Park. However, Germany must consult the Russian Federation before undertaking any changes to the memorial.

The focus of the ensemble is a monument by Soviet sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich, is a 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 (1921-2001), who during the final storm on the centre of Berlin risked his life under heavy German machine-gun fire to rescue a three-year-old German girl whose mother had apparently disappeared.

Before the monument is a central area lined on both sides by 16 stone sarcophagi, one for each of the 16 Soviet 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:

“Now all recognize that the Soviet people with their selfless fight saved the civilization of Europe from fascist thugs. This was a great achievement of the Soviet people to the history of mankind”.

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 of the Motherland weeping at the loss of her sons.