Prisoners who died in the 1920s and 1930s at the Kem transit point, the mainland division of the Solovki camp, were buried in the woods, 3 kms from the camp. A full list of those buried is not available; individual names are known. After 1939, when Solovki closed as a penal facility, the burial ground was not used, and the graves and headboards fell into disrepair. By the early 1990s only one headboard remained on the grave of R.P. Truby (d. 1928).
In 1995, RIC Memorial (St Petersburg), with the support of the Kem district administration and the Karelian Foundation for Humanitarian Initiatives, a marble plaque was attached to the monument, bearing the following inscription: “Here lie the remains of the inmates of the Solovki special-purpose camp, victims of the political repression of the 1920s and 1930s”. In 2003, thanks to the efforts of the Kem metochion of the Solovki monastery a wooden memorial cross was added with a dedication “To the holy martyrs for the faith and innocent sufferers”. In 2011, a symbolic headboard for M.M. Taube was placed at the foot of the cross.
The Commemorative Lists of Karelia, 1937-1938, compiled by Ivan Chukhin & Yury Dmitriev, were published in 2002 (1,087 pp). The online version contains biographical entries for 14,038 individuals.
The online Memorial database (2025) lists 13,408 victims in Karelia. (See Petrozavodsk.) 11,317 were shot. 1,998 were sent to a variety of camps where 424 died (Sevvostlag, Unzhlag, Pechorlag and Taishetlag).
| Date | Nature of ceremonies | Organiser or responsible person | Participants | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Summer
|
Civil funeral rite
|
RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)
|
Yearly 1995-2002, from time to time since 2003
| |
|
Commemorative Services
|
held several times a year since 2003
|
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries |
|---|---|---|
|
Characteristic topsoil subsidence over graves in rows; one marble gravestone from the 1920s has survived
|
not dermined
|
not delineated
|
[ original texts and hyperlinks ]
Archive of the Memorial Research and Information Centre (St Petersburg)
“Kem transit station burial ground”, Virtual Museum of the Gulag [retrieved on 26 May 2022; no longer accessible]
*
Reply by the Kem urban district administration (№ 07-37/334 of 24 April 2014) to a formal enquiry by RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)
