The camp at the Obskaya rail station was set up in late 1946 as a sub-division of Sevzheldorlag, becoming the 5th division of Obsklag after 1947. A subdivision of Obsklag (Construction site 501), responsible for building the railroad from Chum to Labytnangi, was also based there. In 1948-1952 brigade 202 of Obsklag, a zone where women who had given birth in captivity and the camp children’s home (for those aged under 7), was deployed near the station.
In 1947-1950 prisoners, children from the home, and free workers were all buried in coffins in a cemetery half a kilometre away. The burials were made in shallow graves; stakes bearing numbers were placed on the graves and in some cases wooden crosses. The cemetery does not have a clearly defined boundary; the graves were made close together.
All the camp sub-divisions closed in 1955. More than 600 graves, 250 of them children’s graves, were uncovered as a result of investigation in the late 1990s. In 2000 after a low fire in the tundra the lids of the coffins caught fire and the burials were exposed. In 2001 an expedition of the Labytnangi branch of the Yamalo-Nenets local history society, led by A.N. Safonov, reburied the remains exposed by the fire in a common grave in the children’s section of the cemetery. In 2002 the area was fenced off and tidied; grave-markers were placed on the new common graves. A memorial cross was erected with the inscription, “Remember them in your Kingdom, O Lord. Here lie children, the victims of repression in the 1950s”.
No Book of Remembrance has been published for the Yamalo-Nenets AO. Information about inhabitants of the autonomous district who were shot or sent to the Gulag is included in the Tyumen Region Book of Remembrance.
Date | Nature of ceremonies | Organiser or responsible person | Participants | Frequency |
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nk
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Commemorative Services
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nk
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nk
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From time to time
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State of burials | Area | Boundaries |
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The reburial is in good condition; some grave mounds have survived in the cemetery
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More than 10 hectares
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not delineated
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[ Original texts & hyperlinks ]
Archive of the Labytnangi district museum