Camp outposts of Taishetlag, Bamlag and Ozerlag were to be found on the outskirts of the Kvitok settlement between 1937 and 1960. There also was the central camp hospital and the Golden Hill special settlement. Prisoners who died in the hospital, forced settlers and deportees living in Kvitok and the Golden Hill settlements were all buried there.
In 1989-1991 relatives of Lithuanians buried there came and exhumed their remains for reburial in Lithuania. In 1994 the graveyard was studied by Lithuanian researcher Gintautas Alekna. He conducted a photo survey, drew up a plan of the burials, and discovered 86 graves that still retained their markers. In 1996, thanks to the efforts of the “Ognivo” Polish society in Irkutsk a Catholic cross was raised there with a memorial plaque at its base.
In 2006 school No. 85 (Taishet) raised a monument with the inscription, “To the inmates of the Taishet camps, who were unjustly imprisoned and died in captivity”. In 2008 the “Siberian mission” memorial expedition from Lithuania worked at the graveyard, restoring grave markers and clearing the graves of their compatriots. In 2012 a monument was placed on the grave of Adam Stankievič, a Catholic priest and political figure from Belorussia.
The 2025 Memorial database lists 25,729 victims in the Irkutsk Region. See Pivovarikha (which does not include ‘outsiders’ sent to the Region’s special settlements or camps).
From other sources the database names 4,420 sent to the Region, 2,788 in 1930-1 alone. Over 3,000 were deported to special settlements, and 1,609 “dekulakised”. It also lists 387 sent to Taishetlag. 226 of them were arrested in 1937-8 and 21 are recorded as dying there (almost all in 1938) by the Karelian Commemorative Lists. (See Petrozavodsk.)
State of burials | Area | Boundaries |
---|---|---|
A few headboards, burial mounds and characteristic subsidence
|
not determined
|
not delineated
|
[ Original texts & hyperlinks ]
Report on the 1994 and 2008 expeditions by the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania
Ye.S. Seleznyov, “Ascending the Golden Hill”, Biryusinskaya dolina website
T.A. and Ye.S. Seleznyov, “The camps in the past of Taishet”, Imena Bratska portal
*
Reply from the Taishet district administration (№ 1545а/1 of 26 July 2014) to a formal enquiry by RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)