MOSCOW, August 6 (Joy Neumeyer, The Moscow News) – On the southern fringes of Moscow, across from the sprawling offices of Russia’s natural gas giant Gazprom, there is a forest. It is quiet, full of mushrooms and dead leaves. The only people usually there are a pair of monks, who live by a church built on the property.
The forest is part of a village known as Kommunarka, a pre-revolutionary estate turned collective farm, and recently absorbed into Moscow's expanded city limits. In the mid-1930s, part of the land became the dacha of secret police chief Genrikh Yagoda, the man who would ignite Stalin's Terror (and later burn in it himself).
Then, from 1937 to 1941, between 10,000 and 15,000 people are believed to have been shot there and buried in mass graves. They were diplomats, scientists and journalists. They were Russian, Chinese, Polish, Mongolian, English and many more. Their bodies have never been raised; they lie beneath the soil, the silent victims of forgotten crimes.
On a cloudy afternoon in August, a small group of foreign and Russian volunteers is working in the depths of the forest, in one of the areas thought to be a burial ground. They are clearing out old growth and throwing it onto a fire; the ashes of dead tree limbs and leaves flutter up and then down as the flames grow.
They are part of a summer camp run by a German nonprofit, the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace. They range from students to pensioners. And they have chosen to spend two weeks of their summer helping to uncover some of the 20th century's darkest sins.
To keep reading, click here. This story was modified after publication to indicate that the village is now part of Moscow proper.
