Maly Trascjanec in Soviet times

The Soviet culture of remembrance had a major impact on the commemoration of Maly Trascjanec. After the examination of the extermination site by the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union (ČGK), the former camp site was used for agriculture again. This led to a long period of forgetting about the crimes committed at Maly Trascjanec.

The reason given for converting the former camp site into an agricultural kolkhoz was that there was a great lack of money. The design of Maly Trascjanec as a memorial and the erection of memorial stones was considered financially unfeasible¹. The first official memorial, which can still be found on the site today, was built in 1961 on the site of the burned-down barn of the former camp. Other memorial stones and memorials, such as the obelisk in Vjaliki Trascjanec and the Memorial in Šaškoŭka, followed in 1963 and 1966.

The first part of this exhibition deals with the transformation of the Maly Trascjanec memorial site and the memory of the site's past between 1945 and 1966, at the time when the Soviet Union was still in existence.