The Soviet War Memorial is located in the former Soviet sector of Berlin and at the entrance you are greeted by a message from the former Soviet occupying power – a pillar with an inscription to remind East Berliners who liberated Germany from Hitler and the Nazi regime.

It says (translated): “In eternal remembrance of the heroes”

The monument is just one of several Soviet war memorials in Berlin. They are also cemeteries where the Red Army soldiers who fought and fell during the Battle of Berlin are buried.

This memorial is the largest of the the cemeteries with 13,200 soldiers buried here. It is also the largest Soviet cemetery in Europe outside of Russia.

It was built in the aftermath of World War II between 1947 and 1949. The memorial itself is a rectangle surrounded by a wall. It has two large buildings at the entrance and straight paths leading down to the end.

At the end, a black Mother Russia watches over a fallen comrade and behind her, a tall, thin obelisk towers into the sky. Two Soviet colonels are buried underneath the chamber inside the obelisk.

Why the memorial is located in Schönholzer Heide is perhaps no coincidence. The park was Berlin’s second largest forced labor camp during World War II, where many of the forced laborers came from the Soviet Union, the so-called Ostarbeitern (East Workers).

It is an obligation for Germany to look after all three Soviet war memorials and give them protected status. It is part of the agreement with the four occupying powers on the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990.

Needless to say, it is also an obligation for us visitors to pay respect for the dead when we visit this place. It is still a cemetery and these soldiers came from one of the countries that finally liberated Europe from Nazi Germany, regardless of how Europe’s further history with the Cold War developed.