page_title: Soviet War Memorial (Treptower Park)
section_title: Layout
hierarchical_section_title: Soviet War Memorial (Treptower Park) / Layout
caption_attribution_description: English: Panorama of the Soviet War Memorial at Treptow.
context_page_description: The Soviet War Memorial is a war memorial and military cemetery in Berlin's Treptower Park. It was built to the design of the Soviet architect Yakov Belopolsky to commemorate 7,000 of the 80,000 Red Army soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin in April–May 1945. It opened four years after the end of World War II in Europe, on May 8, 1949. The Memorial served as the central war memorial of East Germany.
  The monument is one of three Soviet memorials built in Berlin after the end of the war. The other two memorials are the Tiergarten memorial, built in 1945 in the Tiergarten district of what later became West Berlin, and the Schönholzer Heide Memorial in Berlin's Pankow district.
  Together with the Rear-front Memorial in Magnitogorsk and The Motherland Calls in Volgograd, the monument is a part of a triptych.
context_section_description: The focus of the ensemble is a monument by Soviet sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich: a 12-m tall statue of a Soviet soldier with a sword holding a German child, standing over a broken swastika.  According to Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasily Chuikov, the Vuchetich statue commemorates the deeds of Sergeant of Guards Nikolai Masalov (1921-2001), who during the final storm on the center of Berlin risked his life under heavy German machine-gun fire to rescue a three-year-old German girl whose mother had apparently disappeared.
  Before the monument is a central area lined on both sides by 16 stone sarcophagi, one for each of the then 16 Soviet Republics with relief carvings of military scenes and quotations from Joseph Stalin, on one side in Russian, on the other side the same text in German: "Now all recognize that the Soviet people with their selfless fight saved the civilization of Europe from fascist thugs. This was a great achievement of the Soviet people to the history of mankind". The area is the final resting place for some 5000 soldiers of the Red Army.
  At the opposite end of the central area from the statue is a portal consisting of a pair of stylized Soviet flags built of red granite. These are flanked by two statues of kneeling soldiers. Beyond the flag monuments is a further sculpture, along the axis formed by the soldier monument, the main area, and the flags, is another figure, of the Motherland weeping at the loss of her sons.
  In recent years, the ensemble has undergone a thorough renovation. In 2003 the main statue was removed and sent to a workshop on the island of Rügen for refurbishment. It was replaced on May 4, 2004.
caption: Panorama of the Soviet War Memorial at Treptow
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