The Nyanda special settlement came into existence in the early 1930s. In winter 1940 Polish families (some reports say 320 individuals) arrived here from the territories occupied by the USSR in autumn 1939. The men, women and children who died here were buried in the woods near the settlement and crosses were placed on their graves.
The numbers buried there has not been established; the names of 12 individuals are known. The last Poles left the settlement in 1944. Subsequently, the former special settlement became part of Urdom settlement, and its graveyard was used by all. In 2010 a memorial was erected there. The inscription reads, “1930, in memory of the forced settlers who founded Nyanda, thereby laying the foundations for Urdom settlement, 2010.”
The Memorial online database (2021) includes the names of 56,173 Polish citizens deported to the Arkhangelsk Region and records that 3,872 died there. (The source is the 1997 database mentioned below.) 36,454 of the deportees were men and women of Polish nationality, 11,883 were Jewish., 4,904 Belorussians and 1,894 Ukrainians.
The database records the names of 328 Polish citizens deported to Nyanda (312 men and women of Polish nationality) and lists 13 who died there.
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries |
|---|---|---|
|
Subsidence over burials, in the 1990s some grave crosses remained
|
Not determined
|
Not delineated
|
[ Original texts & hyperlinks ]
Archive of the Sovest (Conscience) Society, Kotlas
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“Nyanda special settlement. Graves of deported Poles”, Virtual Museum of the Gulag [retrieved, 28 May 2022; no longer accessible]
Reply from the Lensky municipal district administration (№ 1509 of 07 April 2014) to a formal enquiry by RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)
