In 1940-1944, Poles deported from the territory occupied by the USSR in 1939 were exiled to the Rossokhi special settlement. [The first to arrive were deported on 9-10 February 1940, Dembowska, 2011.] On 1 January 1941 680 forced settlers were registered there: 505 Poles, 163 Belorussians and 12 people of other nationality. During their first years the rate of mortality was high. The dead were buried on the slopes of the hill near the village. The total numbers buried there are unknown. The historian T.I. Shunina compiled a list of 103 people from the registers of deaths, 45 of them children under the age of 15.
Today the section of Polish burials forms part of Rossokhi’s existing graveyard and is not being used for further interment. There are reports that a wooden Catholic cross formerly stood in the graveyard. In 2009 former forced settler Mecislaw Garbos and others tidied the graveyard and erected a memorial to his deceased relatives and to all the deported Poles in Rossokhi. In 2010, a fence was put up around the graveyard and two additional memorial stones were added. The work was funded by Garbos and the Polish Consulate in St Petersburg, with the support of the Shenkursky district administration and local villagers.
The database “Polish forced settlers in the Arkhangelsk Region” lists 712 individuals, almost all of whom arrived in Rossokhi in March 1940. 537 were of Polish nationality (252 men, 285 women); 159 were of Belorussian nationality (79 women). It names 50 who died there.
The Memorial online database (2025) 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 elsewhere.) 36,454 of the deportees were men and women of Polish nationality, 11,883 were Jewish., 4,904 Belorussians and 1,894 Ukrainians.
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries |
|---|---|---|
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Several grave mounds without markers have survived
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Not determined
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Not delineated
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[ Original texts & hyperlinks ]
“A Polish Cross in Rossokhi”, Vazhsky krai, 24 July 2009 №30 (10110) & 31 July 2009 № 31 (10111)
“A Polish Cross, with the passing years”, Vazhsky krai, 15 October 2010 (№ 42) & 22 October 2010 (№43)
A. Dembovska, The Poles in the Russian North: An album of Polish sites of remembrance, St Petersburg, 2011
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“Rossokhi special settlement. Polish graveyard”, Virtual Museum of the Gulag [retrieved, 28 May 2022; no longer accessible]
