Red Army POW Cemetery. 1/35

Soon after the liberation in spring 1945 a big task began, recovering the remains of Soviet POWs from makeshift graves and massgraves around several POW camps.

Some of these camps in my neighbourhood were espescially gruesome. Near one of the camps, called "Mallnitz", four massgraves were found and during the exhumation of those several bodies showed signs of cannibalism, thats how terrible the conditions had become in the German camps here north by 1944/45.

Surviving prisoners, and interrogated Germans helped locate these graves, which contained 143 dead, but as late as the early 1980s Nato was building some bunkers in the area and 16 more bodies were discovered.

Of the 143 bodies, the autopsy found that 81 had died from starvation, 54 had been shot and 8 beaten to death. The news of these camps and the war crimes that had been committed there travelled around the world.

After the autopsies the bodies were laid to rest in a section of the local cemetery by the church on Hatteng, or Kvesmenes as it was named on german maps.

Liberated Soviet prisoners erected a beautiful wooden entry portal to the gravesite.

In 1952 the bodies were exhumed yet again, and moved to a large cemetery on Tjøtta further to the south, during what became known as Operation Asphalt and the gravesite erased.

From the reburial in 1945.

A few years ago a local fellow published a book ( Krigen i Storfjord. Mord, Mytteri, Krigsforbrytelser. Tore Figenschau ) where I found several photos from this cemetery, together with a painting of the portal done by the British artist Stephen Bone, and when I saw this I knew I had to build a miniature of it.

Today a standard memorial stone is standing on the site.

I had a small coil of barbed wire which I had found near one such POW camp and figured it would be suitable as a base for this project. I cleaned it up and preserved it, and attached a plastic plate to the top of it where the mini portal would stand.

With some help from the GirlfriendWifes skills I had scaled printouts of Stephen Bones painting which simplified the job a lot.

From my miniature stash I found a cup of wooden coffee stirrers which I cut to lenght and taped onto a cutting mat. From the paper print I cut out the heartshaped opening in the cemetery gate and transferred it to the stirrers with a felt pen and then just cut it out from the wooden sticks.

With some balsawood beams I glued together the framework to which I attached the planks using PVA glue.

There were some decorations to the portal, in the top corners were two red stars. These I could easily recreate with some tiny decorative plastic stars which I attached with superglue.

In front of the portal were two benches with wooden plantboxes behind. On each face of the plantboxes were two grails, or vases. These I copied with a pencil on to a thin plasticard, cut them out and glued them in place.

I made the flag from a piece of tissue paper, thinned paint and a plastic rod.

After this, and a lot of procrastination, I could finally open the drawer where I have my paints. A little bit of Offwhite and Salmon pink did the trick and I could see the end of the project that had been on my workbench for way too long.

In the plantboxes were growing two small pines, which I made from wire, CA glue and flock. The groundwork came together using florist foam, thinned PVA glue, tiny pebbles and lots of powdered pigments in grey and brown.

The next morning the whole thing had cured, and here we are, another diorama to find a new home for.