In 1937 several brigades of prisoners from Sevvostlag were deployed to build the fishing port and refrigerator on the Green Cape (Zelyony Mys) near the Nizhnie Kresty settlement (today Chersky settlement). Harsh conditions and starvation led the prisoners to stage an uprising on 22 November that year. Their rebellion was suppressed on 15 December 1937. The 49 prisoners who surrendered were arrested: three of them were shot in Magadan later that month (28 December 1937); the other 46 were shot on 15 January 1938 on the Green Cape and buried in a common grave.

Testimony by local inhabitants led to the discovery of their grave. The Nizhnekolymsky Museum of The History and Culture of the Peoples of the North studied their case files and compiled a list of those executed. In 1996 a wooden cross, subsequently destroyed, was erected there. On 23 August 1997, aided by staff from the museum, missionaries from the Orthodox mission to Yakutia raised and consecrated a new cross on the site.