CHELYABINSK (c) Forced labourers and Bakallag prisoners | Russia's Necropolis of Terror and the Gulag

CHELYABINSK (c) Forced labourers and Bakallag prisoners

Card

№74-04

Date of burial
1941-1944
Show Map
Address
Chelyabinsk, Chopp Street, Northeast cemetery (non-existent)
Access in a populated area
Public transport
On foot
Visiting Hours or Restrictions
Unrestricted
Type of burial
Camp (prison) burial ground
Current use
Commercial use
Ceremonial events
Presence of memorials, etc.
No
Protected status
Not protected
Фотография 2010 года
Фотография 2010 года
Background

According to official sources, the northeast cemetery in the city’s Tractor Factory district was opened at the end of 1941. Between then and 1944 many who built the Chelyabinsk Tractor Factory were buried there: Bakallag prisoners, forced labourers, those who died in the evacuation hospital, German, Rumanian and Hungarian POWs. The numbers of forced labourers buried there has not been established, a few of their names are known. The last burial dates to 1962 after which the cemetery was not used. It fell into disrepair and by the early 2000s few grave markers had survived.

In 2001 a chapel dedicated to the Beheading of John the Baptist was built in the centre of the cemetery and part of its territory was cleared and tidied. In 2010 the city administration decided to move the cemetery and create a green area in its place. In 2010-2011 remains were transferred en masse to the Pokrovskoe cemetery. In spring 2011 a park was laid out in the old cemetery: paths were created, and more than a hundred trees were planted.

Books of Remembrance

Information about Bakallag prisoners, where it survives, can be found in Memorial’s Victims of Political Terror database with its 3 million entries, or in the Open List database (“Victims of Political Repression in the USSR, 1917-1991”).

The electronic Book of Remembrance of Soviet Germans (Gedenkbuch) contains biographical entries on more than 100,000 Soviet Germans variously sentenced under Article 58, deported as forced settlers, or mobilised in camps of forced labourers.

Ceremonies
DateNature of ceremoniesOrganiser or responsible personParticipantsFrequency
nk
Commemorative Services
nk
nk
From time to time
Nature of area requiring preservation
State of burialsAreaBoundaries
grave-markers have survived in part
15 hectares
not delineated
Administrative responsibility and ownership, informal responsibility for the site
On land under the control of the Chelyabinsk City Administration
Sources and bibliography

[ Original texts & hyperlinks ]

M.S. Salmina, “The history of wartime and post-war burials at the Chelyabinsk Tractor Factory cemetery”, Historical Readings, Vol. 9 ,The Unknown War: Little-studied pages of the Great Patriotic War, Chelyabinsk, 2005

 

74-04