Myasnoy Bor is a small village in the Novgorod region. In April of 1942, there was a battle taken away many lives of Russian soldiers. Later this place got a name of the “valley of death”. Nowadays active searching works are conducted in the area. More and more remains are found daily. So let’s follow a group of activists and explore this gloomy place.
At the headquarters coordinating a searching process the most interesting findings of the current season lie on a special table.
The view on the road from an all-terrain vehicle.
“Private Sorokin S.A. was found by the searchers of Tatarstan in 2006.” You can find such monuments at every 20 meters in the forest. It should be mentioned that only 1 out of 50 found soldiers is usually managed to be identified.
“The place of the death of a tanker, Merzlikin Vasily Ivanovich. 1921-1942. Found on the 6th of May in 1990.”
Searching is conducted with the help of a probe – a stick with a metal tip which is frequently stuck in the ground and which makes a specific sound when it finds something.
“The place of the death of a Red Army soldier from the Chelyabinsk region, Butorin Ivan Vasilyevich. 1906-1942. Found on the 19th of August in 2007.”
Found helmets are hung on the trees or put in a prominent position so that they won’t distract a metal detector anymore.
Some remains…
Power lines.
This is an excavation site. Some remains and vertebrae are already collected into a bag.
“Snow Troopers. Kazan”
All found soldiers are buried temporarily in a special place near the headquarters.
Then, on the eve of Victory Day, they are buried in mass graves located at Mysnoy Bor.
Vladimir Ivanov is one of the 15 veterans who fought in these places and currently living in Moscow. Only two of them were able to come to the meeting of the regiment hold at Gorky Park on the 9th of May.
Location: Myasnoy Bor
via feldsparta4
Nice!
What can be nice here?
It is terrible place.
Then the whole world would be a terrible place. I have no idea how many people died on every field or even your yard in the years, that humanity has populated this planet and was in a constant state of war with each other.
Is there a central location that the artifacts go to or are they allowed to keep them?
must be certainly very “safe” to manipulate those grenades etc
Old battle fields should be kept sacred, respected and protected (by strict laws if nothing else) instead of being availible for anyone to go digging around on them for treasure. If these people are allowed to do it to help preserve what’s there with respect, that’s not bad but that other post where they hid most of their faces from the camera, those people are no better than grave robbers. I doubt they would like it if someone was disrespecting and digging up their own graves to take what they could find valuable or for souvenirs.
Once you’re dead you’re dead. What happens then doesn’t matter.
So for you it doesn’t matter but for some others it does. These young men (and young women) lost their lives fighting. The least anyone can do is show them some respect.
The soldiers found on the forest are buried with great respect and recognition. If they weren’t found, they would be still under the earth, completely forgotten…
What happens to the German soldiers found? Where do they get a honorable grave?
Pic captioned “Power Lines”: Thanks for the info, amigo!
I had to laugh at the power lines one as well.
“The Larch”
Good morning. I am the author of this photoes.
That was told in my post, but wasn’t copied here:
Making of this report was inspired by russian authorities – there are plans to build Moscow-StPetersburg highway through that forest and over the bones.
And when that power lines were made at 1960s, bulldozers put the ground with bones from both sides from the place that line were built.
So that photo is more than important in my original post, but that part of message wasn’t copied in here.
Evgeny Feldman, Novaya gazeta
I’m a bit surprised that anybody is allowed to dig like that. Professionals trying to recover and identify people is one thing, but this looks like more like trinket hunting and then if they find somebody, they just turn the remains over. Not the same thing.
So sad, so much loss. Photos remind me of that “Where Have All The Flowers Gone” song.
@Musa
in old europe there isnt a piece of land left where there hasn’t been a battle or two in the past two millenias, there has been so many wars there are remains left literally everywhere. you can’t make all of them gravesites, it makes more sense to let the history freaks dig around and just bury any remains found in a proper graveyard
You’re right. I realize there are too many places where people have died fighting, they cannot be protected from treasure hunters.
I simply feel it’s wrong to haphazardly dig up the dead with the sole purpose of finding war souvenirs or something to sell disregarding the remains completely. What if they take something inportant away from the site that could help someone else identify the people who died there?
If they are respectful of the remains and turn them over to the proper people to be reburied, I have absolutely no problem with that as long as they tell them any important information that would help identify who the people were.
I think what these people are doing is a good thing, until they found these remains, the people who died here were listed as MIA or KIA, and never buried, finding, IDing, and burying them is the the most honorable thing to do.
Old soldiers fading away…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eL1AwrST10
To my knowledge at those days, soviet commanders do not pay too many attention to put bodies of the fallen soldiers to grave. They simply left on the battlefield….
Truly appalling. This is nothing but grave robbing.Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves.
In my country we laws to protect human remains and war sites. The total disrespect shown to the dead and their relatives mirrors the total disrespect of Russian authoriies and the Russians in general for their fellow counrymen. Until Russians learn to protect each others rights they are doomed to viscious repressive governments and predatory oligarchs, which is why the dead are there in the first place. Russia has learned nothing.
A. Bunka here. I was on an archeology dig and what they are doing here is grave robbing. There is no grid set up and the tools are all wrong. Surely, they are digging up Russians and Germans and legal action must be taken to protect the dead.
It’s so sad to think of all of the people that were cut down at the beginning of their lives for such a wasteful and foolish an endeavor as war. May they rest in peace.
Drama queens, lot of you. This isn’t a grave robbing. That extremely rusty material is junk. These people find dead bodies and try to identify them. These remains then can be given proper burial. Not that is really matters. And besides it is either experience for anyone in archeological field and perhaps other fields.
As for digging, anyone can go and dig anything. No one will stop these people. No one really should.
So stop being tough guys over here.
@corruptmage
They’re also looking for valuable artifacts. Digging up a Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves etc etc in gold makes you a small fortune. In that sense, they’re graverobbers. At the same time, they’re finding and naming fallen (russian) soldiers. It’s a difficult issue. I think if ti were up to me, I would let archaeologists handle it, get information on the battle, and then leave ‘as is’ as a ‘sacred ground’, final resting place for the soldiers that fought and died there.