Memorial »Formula of Sorrow«

Памятник »Формула скорби«

In the city of Pushkin (before 1918 Tsarskoye Selo, from 1918 to 1937 Detskoye Selo) the memorial »Formula of Sorrow« commemorates the Jews who were murdered there by German units in October 1941.

History

Tsarskoye Selo 25 kilometres south of Saint Petersburg, has served the Tsars as a popular summer residence since its foundation in 1710. Around 1830 the first Jews came to the city as soldiers of the Tsar's regiment. From the 1860s onwards, more Jews were allowed to move into the city. In Tsarskoye Selo one of the largest Jewish communities in the Russian empire developed that was outside the residential and settlement area designated for them (»Pale of Settlement«). In 1926 the city had 537 Jewish inhabitants. The Jewish population increased due to Jewish migrants from rural areas who did not find a place to live in overpopulated St. Petersburg (after 1924 Leningrad). In 1939, when the city was already renamed Pushkin, about 3,220 of its approximately 56,000 inhabitants were Jewish.
The German Wehrmacht occupied the city on September 17, 1941. From then on the city was located in the immediate vicinity of the front, while Leningrad was put under siege for almost three years. A large number of Jews were able to flee right before the German invasion. Right in the first few days soldiers of the Wehrmacht searched several bunkers of the city and murdered and hanged young men on the main square of the city in front of the Catherine Palace as a deterrent. Among the victims were also Jews. At the beginning of October 1941, the Jews were forced to register and surrender their property. On October 4, 1941, all Jews had to gather at the German commandant's office. Several hundred Jews were imprisoned in the cellars of the Catherine Palace. Until October 8, 1941 the Sonderkommando (SS special commando) 1b under SS-Oberführer Erich Ehrlinger shot all prisoners in several groups at different locations in the Alexander Park, The Catherine Park and the Babolovsky Park. In the following days they chased and shot all Jews who had managed to flee from the »Aktion«. On January 2, 1942 the Einsatzkommando (mobile killing unit) A declared the city to be »judenfrei« (free of Jews).

Pushkin, 2016, Memorial »Formula of Sorrow«, Arie Shapira

Pushkin, 1941, German occupiers are standing on the main staircase of the Cameron-Gallery in the Catherine Park, sobor-ekaterina.ru

Victims

The number of victims in witness reports and documents of the Soviet Commission of Inquiry are contradictory. They vary between 150 and about 800. All in all the Einsatzgruppe (mobile killing unit) A murdered about 4,100 Jews in the Leningrad area.

In the Russian Federation, the 9 May – the anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War against »Hitlerite Fascism« – is the most important public holiday to have been retained from the country’s Soviet past. On 23 August 1939 the Soviet Union, led by Josef Stalin (1878–1953), initially signed a »non-aggression pact« with the Third Reich. This pact defined the »spheres of interest« of both regimes in East Central Europe and contained the provision to divide Poland between them. On June 22, 1941 the German Wehrmacht and its allies commenced their invasion of Soviet territory. Recent research estimates that by the end of the war in 1945 there had been up to 28 million civilian and military deaths in occupied Soviet territory. The Soviet culture of memory continues to have an impact on today’s Russia. Its symbols, such as the monumental style memorials in Saint Petersburg or Volgograd, are still popular and used to stage large-scale memorial services such as on 9 May. However, these sites of memory are less places of mourning and remembrance of the victims than places to honour wartime heroes. For a long time the victims were not remembered at all, and later they were classed as »victims of fascism«. The influence of this approach to the past can be seen, for example, in the conflict surrounding a sculpture put up in 1995 in front of the Great Patriotic War Museum in the capital Moscow. Entitled »Tragedy of Peoples«, the monument is dedicated to the approximately twenty million civilian victims in the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1944 and was intended to bring about a turnaround in the Russian culture of memory. However, the monument had to be moved behind the building following intense criticism, also from the general public, that the message was too pessimistic. At the same time, however, there were also non-governmental human rights organisations such as »Memorial«, which deal with repressed aspects of history, for example the prisoners of war from the Red Army and forced labourers held captive in Germany during the Second World War. Upon their return to the Soviet Union, these individuals were classed as traitors, universally accused of collaborating with the Germans and again imprisoned in camps. In terms of official state remembrance, there are regular remembrance initiatives on the part of committed local departments for culture, which have succeeding in establishing specific memorials as well as a culture of remembrance that includes the victims. It is often thanks to the commitment of individuals or Jewish communities that small sites of memory have been able to emerge in a number of locations, often funded with the smallest of budgets. After 1941, some 100,000 Soviet Jews died on the territory of today’s Russian Federation, mainly as a result of mass shootings carried out by SS Einsatzgruppen and their auxiliaries. They were remembered as »peaceful citizens« in the Soviet period. It is only since the early 1990s that additional plaques have been put up at official monuments and that Jewish victims have been named or commemorated by translating the inscriptions into Hebrew. There was also rudimentary Russian research into the Holocaust. In 2012, the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre was opened in Moscow, acknowledged also by international experts. At the same time, however, the political regime ruling the country has become more and more nationalistic. State propaganda is dominated by an openly revisionist historical narrative which has only turned more aggressive with the war of aggression against Ukraine. Important civil society organisations, including »Memorial«, have been repressed severely.

Remembrance

On January 24, 1944 the Red Army recaptured Pushkin. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union there was no memorial for the murdered Jews of Pushkin. Many mass shooting sites are still unknown to this day. The SS-Oberführer and commander of Sonderkommando (SS special commando) 1b, Erich Ehrlinger (1910–2004), who had been responsible for the murder of the Jews in Pushkin, was brought to justice in the Federal Republic of Germany, but did not have to serve his 12 years' imprisonment because of his »permanent inability to stand trial«.
In 1991 members of the group »Investigation of Disaster« erected the monument »Formula Skorbi«, translated »Formula of Sorrow«. The bronze statue was designed by the famous Soviet sculptor and graphic artist Vadim Sidur. It stands on a granite platform. The Hebrew and Russian inscription reads: »They have shed their blood like water and there was no-one to bury them. To the Jews of Pushkin, fallen victims of the Fascist genocide of 1941«. The abstract sculpture is 2,4 meters high and is reminiscent of a crouched human being and the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet »Alef«, which symbolizes the beginning. The memorial is located in front of the Alexander Palace. Every year on the first Sunday of October a commemoration ceremony is held in memory of the victims.

Pushkin, about 1942, Soldier of the Wehrmacht in the SS cemetery at the Alexander Palace, sobor-ekaterina.ru

Pushkin, 2016, Commemorative plaque in front of the monument, Arie Shapira

Possibilities

A commemoration ceremony is held at the monument every year on the first weekend of October.

Open

The memorial is accessible at all times.

Contact

Moskowskaja uliza 5
196601 Puschkin

Tsarskoye Selo, 1905, Old town view, public domain

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