Soviets graveyard

Good afternoon everybody!

Last week we went for 3 days to a trip to Helgeland. We saw many different places such as a graveyard, similar churches, a museum connected with the nature and the human, a museum with old objects... In my case, I get a little bit shock when we went to the graveyard of soviets. They were prisioners of camps in Norway, they had a really poor situation and hard life conditions. That is the main reason of their deaths: All in all 13,700 soviets died (8,000 were lying in the cementery). The interesting thing is the localization; It is a wide field surrounded by fences, where are all the names of the deceased soviets, but there is no headstones and there is just a memorial monument where they make tribute for all the work made during their lifes in Norway. For me it seems like if it was camouglaged. Anyway, the reason for choosing that place is one historical happening. The 27th of November of 1944 british planes attacked and bombed a boat which was transporting, in consequence, approximately 2,600 people died. In 1951 the Norwegian Government decided to move all the dead bodies in the northern Norway to Tjøtta war cementery (Helgeland), to reduce the risk of spying. This action was called "Operation Asphalt" created lots of complains. This graveyard was finished in 1953.

Memorial monument

All that information was new for me and actually, I didn't know about this historical place before, because I didn't study it at the school. Even if it has been the 3rd biggest dramatic happening during the history of the world, it is hard to find information in any history book or internet. It looks like if they wanted to hide an embarrasing reality in a subtle way. However, I think that it was enought important happening and that everyone should know about it. In fact, our history is the best way of learning from our mistakes and also, it is a tool for not making the same mistakes over and over.