Soviet Cenotaph, Berlin
Wednesday, 14th December 2005 by Alex Turnbull
This is the Soviet Cenotaph in Treptower Park, Berlin. It was built under orders from Stalin to serve as a memorial to the 20,000 Soviet soldiers that died during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, and features a 13 metre-tall statue of a Russian soldier holding a child and a sword, standing over a broken swastika.
Supposedly the statue reflects an occasion when a Soviet soldier saved a German girl - and it still stands today due to the German agreement that it would retain all Soviet war-memorials in perpetuity, as a condition for the reunification of the divided country.
The Wikipedia page is a little empty, but War-Memorial.net has an excellent pictorial tour of the memorial.
Thanks to Peter.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
Not to be cynical here, but is there a memorial to the many German women raped by Soviet soldiers during the Battle of Berlin?
The victor of the battle is the who to writes the history.
There is a lot memorials to Russian women and children killed by german soldiers in Russia and exUSSR.
It is typical of English hypocritical morality to concern themselves with women being raped and ignore the deaths and mutilations meted out to German women and children by the RAF terror-bombing.