TelinFyodor

   Not long ago, I wrote a post about remaining fortifications of the Moscow defense zone, where mentioned the catastrophic 1941 defeat of the Red army near the town of Vyazma. It pushed me to visit this town last weekend, because one of my great-grandfathers perished there during that war. His remains, buried in one of mass graves were not found until the 1980s.  He was one of many thousands of men who met a similar fate during that terrible time. The portrait with a carved wooden frame is the only one thing that remains of him.    Vyazma is situated in Smolensk oblast, 230 kilometers from Moscow, and connected by the train line to Belorusky. The train ride to Vyazma take about two hours. The Vyazma train station is quite large, and the most interesting thing is the many old Soviet locomotives with red stars on them.   A steam locomotive behind the typical post-war station building. For me, day trips like this, where I travel light without a ca...

    The Katyn massacre was a series of mass executions of Polish intelligentsia carried out by the NKVD in April and May of 1940. Though the killings took place at several places, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered. Two years ago, I also visited the village of Mednoye in the Tver oblast, which is near the site of the burial of Polish military members together with Soviet citizens, all shot during the repressions of 1937-1938. The Katyn massacre was prompted by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps, dated 5 March 1940, approved by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the USSR, including its leader, Joseph Stalin. The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000. The victims were executed in the Katyn Forest in Russia, the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons, and elsewhere. Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet inva...

        After the visiting the Katyn memorials I began to explore the local forest in the Krasny Bor district, in a search for Hitler's headquarters, "Barenhalle," that was located there during the war. It's actually was used by the staff of the army group centre.     From the big original complex, now there have survived only a couple of huge pillboxes and a flooded bunker. I was without a car during the time of my visit, so I took public transportation. After exploring the area, I some time left before the train to Smolensk was due to arrive. Therefore, I decided to visit the cemetery for German soldiers, which is only a kilometer and a half from the train station. I've heard that the cemetery was created during the time of war, in 1941, and then, after the liberation of the Smolensk region in 1943 it was destroyed like all other German cemeteries. The renovation of the cemetery was begun in the 1990s, with money from German...