Venice of the North
While departing shortly after the events of my previous blog post, I realized that I failed to mention a very powerful experience I encountered in Saint Petersburg, Russia: the mass graves of WW2.
While touring Saint Petersburg on the second day of our voyage, our guide found an hour of time to visit the mass graves just outside of Saint Petersburg. I took a picture of the eternal flame that marks the entrance of the cemetery.
After pacing down the long isle, I encountered large, basketball-court-sized plots with a marble stone stating a year and month of the years throughout the duration of WW2. As seen in my picture, people often place roses upon these stones to commemorate the tragic passing of loved ones.
To make a long story short, people in Saint Petersburg were dying so quickly and in such vast numbers, that if one of your loved ones died in the streets during the siege of Saint Petersburg, their body would be loaded onto a cart and dumped into a large pit along with hundreds of other bodies. It was impossible to have an individual burial in the middle of WW2 with the Nazi front encroaching.
Thus, if you wish to pay your respects to a loved one lost during the war, the best chance you have of finding their remains is an approximation of the plot based upon the suspected year and month of their death. There are an estimated 180,000 dead buried in the cemetery, with over 185 plots of unmarked graves. I’ve attached a few somber pictures from the cemetery for your browsing. Please enjoy them respectfully.
Also, I included a picture from a children’s festival near our ship to brighten the mood 😀 !
Best,
Jacob Reshetar
Tags: semester at sea, Study Abroad
