The Formula of Sorrow is a monument to Jewish victims of Nazism, killed in 1941 in the city of Puschkin during the World War II. The memorial is located in the park at the intersection of Dvortsovaya and Moskovskaya streets, not far from the Alexander Palace, near which mass executions took place. In total, about 3,600 Jews were killed in the Nazi-occupied Leningrad Oblast, of which about 250-300 were in Pushkin. During the Soviet era, the Holocaust was hushed up by the authorities. It was not until the 1980s that a group of Jewish activists began to investigate the history of the genocide of Jews near Leningrad (Saint Petersburg). On October 13, 1991, on her initiative, a monument to Jewish victims of Nazism was opened. The central part of the memorial was a sculpture by the cult underground Soviet artist Vadim Sidur "The Formula of Sorrow". The architectural design of the monument was created by Boris Bader. The memorial slab, made as a projection of the Star of David, contains a quotation from the Psalms in Hebrew and Russian, as well as an inscription dedicated to the murdered Jews.[1][2]
| Formula of Sorrow | |
|---|---|
| Russian: Формула скорби | |
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  Formula of Sorrow Location in Saint Petersburg  Formula of Sorrow Location in Russia | |
| Artist | Vadim Sidur |
| Completion date | October 13, 1991 |
| Medium | Bronze, granite |
| Movement | Underground, abstract art, avant-garde |
| Dimensions | 240 cm (94 in) |
| Location | Puschkin, Saint Petersburg |
| 59°43′19″N 30°23′49″E / 59.72208°N 30.39706°E | |
The ghetto, murder operations, and ultimate liberation
editThe Germans occupied Pushkin on 17 September 1941. Prior to the German occupation of Pushkin on 17 September 1941, many Russian and Jewish residents had evacuated from the town. The residents who stayed behind faced a lot of hardship, following the German occupation. The town quickly became part of the front line, as the Germans did not manage to move east during the entire Leningrad blockade from 1941 to 1944. Following the start of the German occupation, the remaining Jewish population of Pushkin were kept in a ghetto, which was very short-lived. The town's ghetto was liquidated in a number of murder operations in October 1941, mostly in Ekaterinsky and Bablovsky Parks near the Ekaterinsky Palace. According to another source, another group of Jews were shot at the border of Pushkin's military airfield and also in nearby swamps. The Jews of Pushkin were kept in a ghetto and shot (virtually entirely) in 1941, during the ghetto's liquidation. Some Jews escaped and fled the ghetto and those murder operations and went into hiding; virtually all of the them were denounced and killed by German officers in the following weeks and months, before on 2 January 1942, the German officers had declared the town as being "completely judenrein", after the last group of Jews were denounced and killed in Pushkin the day earlier. Units of the Red Army liberated Pushkin on 24 January 1944, from the German occupation. There were virtually no Jewish survivors from Pushkin, who survived those 1941 murder operations in Pushkin, at the time of the Red Army liberation of Pushkin on 24 January 1944.[3]
(Note: A number of those murder operations of the Jews of Pushkin commenced in October 1941, with the liquidation of the ghetto in the town.).
References
edit- ^ Ed. G. Farber; A. Frenkel (1991). Формула скорби [Formula of Sorrow]. Translated by D. G. Yakovlev. St. Petersburg: The Leningrad Holocaust Research Group. ISBN 5-8392-0025-5.
- ^ "Pushkin: Commemoration of Jewish Victims". Yad Vashem. Retrieved 2020-08-27.
- ^ "Pushkin: Commemoration of Jewish victims". Yad Vashem. Retrieved 2020-08-27.