SALASPILS CAMP MEMORIAL, LATVIA

SALASPILS CAMP MEMORIAL

MEMORIAL TO THE VICTIMS OF A CONCENTRATION CAMP IN SALASPILS
IN THE RIGA AREA, LATVIA

Photographed in 1984 in the USSR

"HERE BE GIANTS"

BARBAROSSA: Nazi Germany Attacks the USSR

OPERATION BARBAROSSA


© Gwendolyn Stewart 2009; All Rights Reserved

THE BREST FORTRESS MEMORIAL

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union at Brest, in what is now Belarus. The Nazis were surprised by the resistance, memorialized by the Brest Fortress monument pictured above.

WHITE SANDS

WHITE SANDS

A PLACE OF BEAUTY, AND OF THE "TRINITY" SITE OF THE FIRST DETONATION OF AN ATOMIC WEAPON (WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, NEW MEXICO)

STALINGRAD TANK & BOY

STALINGRAD TANK & BOY

May 9 is Victory Day in Russia, the equivalent of V-E Day for the U.S. and Europe, where it is celebrated on May 9 (different time zones).

Pictured above, a Soviet boy playing on one of the tanks in one of the memorials to the Battle of Stalingrad, one of the turning points of "The Great Patriotic War," or World War II. By this boy's time the city had lost the "Stalin" in its name, and as "Volgograd" now honored the river Volga and not the former Leader of the USSR.

It was 1984, and I was wandering around the Soviet Union for seven weeks by myself, exploring and taking photographs. By the time I arrived in Volgograd, I was quite cut off from the outside world.

So it was left to an angry woman in this city in which, as the Soviets saw it, they helped save the world from the Nazis, to inform me that President Ronald Reagan had threatened to bomb the USSR.

It was the summer of the Los Angeles Olympics, and the Soviets were staging a tit-for-tat retaliatory boycott of those Olympics. The U.S. had devastated them by boycotting their 1980 Moscow Olympics after they had invaded Afghanistan.

The Chinese in more recent years could not have wanted their Olympics more than the Soviets wanted theirs then, or Vladimir Putin wants the Winter Olympics in Sochi now.

The Cold War had newly heated up. Into this time of tension, Ronald Reagan let fall his "joke," in the warm-up to one of his Saturday radio addresses. He declared "Russia" an outlaw nation and announced that the bombs would fly in five minutes.

"MOTHER RUSSIA" IS IN DANGER

"MOTHER RUSSIA"

Is

In Danger

"Mother Russia," the hugely tall monument to the Battle of Stalingrad officially known as The Motherland Calls!, is in danger. The statue sits on top of the hill called Mamayev Kurgan in the Russian city now known as Volgograd. When it was built, four decades ago, it was the tallest in the world; now it is sinking, and, possibly, in danger of toppling.

The size of the monument is breathtaking. This representation of what after all is meant to be human leaves actual human beings creatures of a totally different scale.

The scale of the killing in the killing fields of the hill "Mamayev Kurgan," and in Stalingrad as a whole, is likewise hard to grasp. It is estimated that two million people perished in the battle.