The second Soviet monument I stumbled across on my recent trip to Germany was at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp near Weimar. It was constructed by the Soviet Union in 1958 to commemorate the estimated 56,545 people who died at the camp during the Holocaust.

As you approach the memorial site, emerging from the trees, it is impossible to ignore the enormous stone tower which stands as the centrepiece of the whole memorial….

The entire memorial is built on the southern slope of the Ettersberg mountain near Weimar and just in front of the stone tower is a collection of figures looking out at the spectacular vista….

The sculpture depicts emaciated prisoners as they are liberated from the camp in 1945….

They help to give a human face to the memorial and remind you exactly what it was built to remember….

The sculpture was designed by Fritz Cremer and the detailed figures represent resistance fighters inside the camp at the moment of their liberation….

As you look down the steps to the next portion of the memorial, you begin to realise the immensity of the whole thing….

Being built on the side of a mountain means that it has a fantastic view of the surrounding countryside and the city of Weimar….

At the bottom of the huge set of steps is the first of three circular areas that are constructed around natural depressions in the ground. These depressions are where the SS dumped the ashes of people they had cremated in the camp between the end of 1944 and March 1945….

From here, a large paved area joins the remaining two natural depressions in a giant arc lined with plinths. Each plinth is dedicated to one of the countries that the Buchenwald prisoners originated from….

The size of the whole site is quite remarkable and must have taken a considerable amount of planning by the Soviet Union….

The stone tower that forms the centrepiece of the memorial can be seen from the city of Weimar over six kilometres away….

There is no denying that Soviet memorials were built on a vast scale. Whether this extravagance is justified is questionable but it’s worth remembering in this case that Buchenwald Concentration Camp witnessed the massacre of over 50,000 people. Therefore, any memorial which reminds people of this horrific period in history is in my view extremely important, regardless of it’s size or grandiosity.