re-visiting the site of the former soviet prison camp

RE-VISITING THE SITE OF THE FORMER SOVIETPRISON CAMP IN TAMBOV

Florence FröhligSödertörn University, Sweden

Abstract

This article examines visits by French people to the former Soviet prison campin Tambov, Russia, where Alsatians-Mosellans men were imprisoned duringWorld War II. Because the memory of these prisoners of war, conscripted by forceinto the German army during the war is disappearing together with the witnesses,some survivors organized in the 1990s journeys to the Tambov former prisoncamp, called “pilgrimages.” There are currently two kinds of pilgrimages: pil-grimages for survivors of the camp and their close relatives and pilgrimages forgrandchildren of former Tambov inmates. This article suggests that the pilgrims,confronting their past, are engaged with a process of identity making, and that pil-grimage provides pilgrims with the opportunity to confront their grief for thedead or their sense of injustice and to let go of the past. The article concludes thatwith the pilgrimage the value of Tambov as a place of death is re-evaluated.

Keywords: Alsace-Moselle, pilgrimage, prisoners of war (POWs), soviet prisoncamp, Tambov, World War II legacies

The town of Tambov in Russia1 is a well-known place in Alsace-Moselle, formany men from the region had been interned there during World War II.2

This camp was known as the French camp, the camp where the Alsatian-Mosellan men who were forced to join the German Army were held cap-tive. Most of the 130,000 men enlisted by force were sent to the EasternFront and ended up in Soviet prison camps as a result of desertion or arrest.3

Among all prison camps, that of Tambov became the symbol of the cruelfate reserved for them: hunger, cold, illness, forced job, neglect.

Journeys Volume 14, Issue 1:68–88 © Berghahn Books 2013doi:10.3167/jys.2013.140104 ISSN 1465-2609 (print), ISSN 1752-2358 (online)

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These men, calling themselves “Les Malgré-Nous” (lit.: against our will),are the “shamefaced soldiers” who ended war in the uniform of the aggres-sors and who carried the physical and psychical stigmata of their intern-ment in the Soviet prison camps. The perceived hostile atmosphere at theirreturn to France and the non-recognition of their experience and sufferingled to feelings of anger and frustration. These feelings were difficult to artic-ulate as they were victims who would not be recognized as such becausethey had been on the side of the aggressor; therefore most of the survivorschose silence.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the living memory of this event isdisappearing together with the witnesses. However, since the 1990s, jour-neys to the former prison camp in Tambov, called pilgrimages, have beenorganized at the initiative of some survivors, who had been scandalized dur-ing a private journey to the former prison camp to discover that nothing oftheir tragic past could be seen. In 1995 these former inmates formed an asso-ciation to give a more formal aspect to their journeys and in 1996 constituteda special journey for young people with the explicit aim to organize a memo-rial site for the French prisoners of war (POWs) in the Rada forest. Duringthe first Youth pilgrimage in 1996, a space on the site of one of the massgraves was chosen and marked off in agreement with the local Russianauthorities, to organize a memorial site. The pilgrimages succeeded oneanother every year until 2000 and every two years after that. There are twotypes of these pilgrimages: those of the Ancients, called so because the pil-grimages were primarily intended for the survivors of the camp, and the pil-grimages of the Youth, even if all the participants are not young.

This article draws on my observant participation (Michalowski andDubisch 2001: 24) of three pilgrimages: two Youth pilgrimages, in 2008 and2010, and one Ancients pilgrimage in 2010. In order to deepen my under-standing of what was going on during the pilgrimages, fifteen more interviewswith participants of the journeys to Tambov have been conducted after thetrips: six interviews with former POWs, one with an old female contemporaryof the former POWs, four interviews with children of former POWs (secondgeneration), and four interviews with members of the third generation.

This article offers an insider perspective of the phenomena as my owngrandfather had been interned at the Tambov prison camp during WorldWar II. Even if he hardly ever spoke about this period, I have always feltthat I would have to go to Tambov some day. Yet in this project my “self”

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Re-Visiting the Site of the Former Soviet Prison Camp in Tambov

and the “research object” overlap because one of my motivation to engagewith this project was to understand why I, as a “self” felt the urge to par-ticipate in such journeys to Tambov. Hence I am, consciously or not, will-ingly or not, the bearer of this cultural legacy and historical burden. Here thefact that I carry both a personal and ethnographic self—simultaneouslybelonging to both personal and professional worlds—which cannot be seenas distinct entities had an important impact on the fieldwork and the gath-ering of the data. In this respect, my strategy during the interviews was toshare my thoughts and analyses with the interviewees in order to confrontmy ideas about what was going on with their own interpretation. Conse-quently, this study can be considered as a co-construction and collabora-tion even if, I, as the researcher, have the responsibility of the analysis.

World War II ended over half a century ago. However, the memorial prac-tices of the former POWs and their descendants demonstrate that the war’sexperiences remain a live issue in Alsace-Moselle for one or more generations.

My interest lies in the individual and collective efforts that people haveadopted to overcome the cultural legacies of World War II. Here the focus isdrawn on journeys undertaken by former French POWs and their descen-dants to the former prison camp in Tambov. What do the participants in thejourneys experience—subjectively and culturally—at Tambov? What are thesignificance and the meaning people put in the act of undertaking such ajourney to a negative heritage place? (Ashworth et al. 2007).

In that respect, my theoretical focus lies on the homo actans engaged incollective remembrance. Collective remembrance is seen as the outcome ofindividuals and groups acting together not at the behest of the state butbecause they feel the need to speak out. Their agency is a personal decision,but their practices are social because they exist in a social framework, theframework of collective action (Winter and Sivan 1999).

The decision of the organizers to call these journeys a “pilgrimage” isnot innocuous. As the anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff pointed out: “Rit-ual is in part a form, and a form which gives certain meanings to its con-tent … its medium is part of the message” (Myerhoff and Moore 1977: 8).This article considers the journeys as a form of secularized pilgrimages.By using this term one implicitly acknowledges that the participant in thepilgrimage goes through an inner transcendental process. In this sense thepilgrimage operates also on an inner level. The participants’ presence onthe memorial site represents a threshold, a place and moment “in and out

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of time” (Turner 1974: 197), where an inner transcendental process can beexperienced through the participation in symbolic activities: their physi-cal and emotional participation in mourning ceremonies as well as theirconcrete physical work to maintain the site (for the participants of theYouth pilgrimages).

Here I am particularly interested in the ritual aspect of the commemo-rative practices, in the ways rituals intentionally organize and orientate theparticipants’ actions in the world. Public commemoration is not only a setof political gestures and material tasks; it is also a ritual, an art form, the artof arranging and interpreting signifying practices. Indeed the study of moreor less formalized events and actions can be seen as mirroring the socialstructure or as a process of transformation, through which norms are nego-tiated. As the anthropologist Don Handelman suggested, it is “through thedifferent meta-logics that organize the practice of ‘rituals,’ that we areenabled to change and/or to stultify, in relation to the possibilities that thesehorizons offer and withhold” (1998: x).

Journeys to Tambov

The three journeys took place in August. Whereas the two Youth pilgrim-ages were subsidized for seventeen people and attracted people betweenthe ages of eighteen and forty (with a predominance of male participants),the pilgrimage of the Ancients gathered forty-nine people between twenty-two and eighty-six years old (twenty-eight men and twenty-one women).The pilgrimages brought together three generations: survivors or contem-poraries, children of the former POWs, and two grandchildren.

Pilgrims gathered at the railway station in Strasbourg to take a bus to theairport of Frankfurt-Hahn, before taking a flight to Moscow, from where theytook a night train to Tambov. I distinguished two sorts of activities duringthe journeys: the activities related to “Russia in the past” and the activitiesrelated to “Russia in the present.” The activities related to “Russia in thepresent” correspond to the pilgrims’ experience of Russia in a contemporarytime frame: official receptions by local politicians, tourist activities, andthrough informal interaction with the local population. By “Russia in thepast” I mean the visits to and the commemorative ceremonies on memorialsites and the Youth tour participants’ work to maintain the French Square.



Indeed every day such a sequence was included in the planning of all thepilgrimages, but not necessarily in the same order.

Five places related to the presence of POWs were visited during the jour-neys. Three of the places are situated in the Rada forest: the internationalmemorial site, the so-called French Square, and the so-called French ceme-tery. Furthermore, the group visits the necropolis of two towns, Kirsanovand Morshansk, where the military hospitals were situated. Each of theseplaces might represent the sacred destination of the pilgrimages. However,which place represented the shrine, the holy place, in the eyes of the par-ticipants depended on each pilgrim’s individual relationships to the eventsor the place. For the purpose of this article, I focus on the ceremonies tak-ing place at the French Square.

According to the interviews, the most common reason for the travel isthe personal connection of the travelers with the site. Pilgrims say they goto Tambov to pay their respects to the Alsatians-Mosellans who were impris-oned or died at the Eastern Front. The site carries a personal meaning for thepilgrims either because they are relatives of inmates or because they iden-tify with the heritage of Tambov.

Figure 1: The French Square


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Figure 2: The International Memorial Site

Whereas the objective of the pilgrimage is the same for all the partici-pants, the reasons for undertaking the journey are personal for each person.The former inmates whose aim was to pay respect to their comrades whohad been buried there, clearly expressed that they felt “a debt of honor,” a“debt toward the one who died there.” For the other participants, beyondthe will to pay respect, the motivation for undertaking such a journey wasconnected to the concept of caring. Ms G, a very alert and dynamic lady inher seventies, had been three times to Tambov in memoriam of five youngmen of her village who never came back from the East front—a way for herto show that someone cares for these men who have no siblings or childrenalive to remember them. The pilgrims of the second generation are usuallyalso drawn by a concern of caring for their ancestors. But this feeling of car-ing encompasses different meaning for orphans, children, or more distantrelatives of former POWs.

If most of the pilgrims make the journey for their own sake, sometimesthey do it for the sake of a parent. Ms M did the pilgrimage on behalf of hersick mother whose brother did not come back from Tambov. Mr J, the son ofa POW who is buried in Morshansk (a town located sixty kilometers from



Tambov), also took part in the pilgrimage to Tambov for the sake of his mother,who, as he wrote to me later “waited until my return, to die in peace.”

Whatever the personal motivations of the participants, the objective ofthe pilgrimage, to recall these events of the regional past, is achieved on thespot through two means: the creation of a memorial site (and its mainte-nance) and the participation in the commemorative ceremonies.

Pilgrimage and Confrontation with the Past

The entire pilgrimage can be seen as a commemorative act, “an act arisingout of a conviction, shared by a broad community, that the moment recalledis both significant and informed by a moral message” (Winter 2008: 62). Themotto of the journeys is to remember “ceux qui nous suppliaient de ne pasles oublier” (the ones who begged us not to forget them). In others words, thepurpose of the pilgrimage is to pay tribute to the Alsatian-Mosellan forcedconscripts fallen on the Eastern Front. Thus visiting and engaging with thelegacy of Tambov is a cultural and political statement as well as an act ofremembering. The pilgrims’ agency is a clear challenge to the paradigm ofthe French war remembrance, in which the experience of the Alsatian-Mosellan POWs could not be articulated. Indeed the war has been remem-bered and commemorated in the paradigm of the national frame, in whichthe memories of the POWs could not be expressed, as they did not conformto the heroic image of the French resistance cultivated by official history.What is at stake here is the fact that the winners of war write the historyand determine the heritage. Above all, the heritage is almost inevitablyabout “goods things, events and cultural and communal pride in identity”(Smith 2006: 58). Furthermore, the heritage discourses within the narrativeof the nation, explicitly promote the experience and values of elite socialclasses, in which the experiences of ordinary soldiers of modest backgrounddo not fit in.

During the ceremonies people are engaged with the legitimization of thepower of their social identities (Smith 2006). The agency of the participantsin the pilgrimage can thus be seen as a claim of the “excluded from history”facing the state representing the “winner of history.” Because the death of aloved one during the war could not be framed as “the death for France,”new significance had to be found to give meaning to the death of these men.


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On the occasion of the ceremonies in 2008 and 2010, the death of POWscould not be justified as a sacrifice for their homeland. Through speechesand sermons the concept of suffering “without a cause” emerged. ThePOWs, who died “for nothing,” became during those speeches, the sacri-ficed of Alsace-Moselle. This was achieved when death was spoken of as a“sacrifice for the family,” given the fact that the withdrawal from conscrip-tion meant reprisals on their family. The notion of the sacrifice for the fam-ily was extended to that of a sacrifice made by the Alsatian-Mosellansocieties, which in its turn became a debt for the Alsatians-Mosellans tocommemorate their sacrifice.

It should nevertheless be remembered that the act of commemorationused to be the performance of a consensus, “an agreed interpretation of thepast linked to shared views of the present” (Burke 2010: 109). In otherwords, only a chosen part of the past is highlighted during the ceremonies.As a matter of fact, the focus is drawn to these men forced to join the Ger-man army and later imprisoned in the Tambov camp. The fact that somePOWs might have enlisted voluntarily in the German army is not men-tioned. Furthermore nothing is said about former POWs who watched overtheir countrymen and consequently enjoyed a better treatment. As Burke(2010) suggests, ceremonies are “co-memorations”; in other words, they arecollaborative acts of recall and recollection. Given that the focus during theceremonies is on the Alsatian-Mosellan victims, the distinction between thedifferent sorts of prisoners and their fates at the prison camp is blurred. Thestatements made during the ceremonies or the story pilgrims speak out tothemselves, are performative. Indeed, statements make something happen.As Burke writes,

Co-memorations are rituals which “canonize” particular events, in thesense of giving them a sacred or exemplary quality, making them “his-toric” as well as historical. They tell a story, present a “grand narrative,”or make it grand by performing it. They reconstruct history or “re-col-lect” or “re-member” it in the sense of practicing bricolage, assemblingfragments of the past into new patterns. (2010: 107)

As Smith reminds us, remembering is “an active process in which thepast is both collectively and individually negotiated and reinterpreted,through not only the experiences of the present but also the needs of the



present” (2006: 58). As a matter of fact, the pilgrimages to Tambov are per-formative occasions during which pilgrims re-affirm their collective iden-tity and present a selected and consensual interpretation of the past eventswithin the context of the present.

The creation of a memorial site is another purposeful and intentional actaimed to materialize the past and to constitute a tangible heritage. Thememorial is not only a physical reminder that people were buried at thisprecise location, but it also shows that someone does care about the dead.For the pilgrims the construction of a monument can be seen as an attemptto reconstruct the past in the “enduringness of materials.” Yet at the sametime it functions as a catalysts for remembrance, it bridges back into thepast and attests that this past should be held in public awareness rather thanbe forgotten (Ricœur 2005: 150). Therefore, monuments connect togetherplace and time: place is given a historical signification and history is givena spatial dimension (Kverndokk 2007). But above all, the creation of amemorial provides the pilgrims with a shrine, which “enables people tocrystallize and affirm their images of the past” (Reader and Walter 1993:252). The absence of sacred destination often prompts families to createtheir own. As Mr D told me, while recalling her first journey to the prisoncamp in 1995: “We were so lost … we had to persuade ourselves that it wasthe right place because we couldn’t see anything.” Yet the site was chosenamong several mass graves by the first survivors who went back in 1995 inorder to create a memorial site for the French POWs as the Alsatian-Mosel-lan corpses are scattered in various unmarked burial sites.

As Katherine Verdery reminds us, “Even when ideas about vampires andthe undead have gone out of style, one common rule about proper burialstill in force is that our sons must be buried on our soil” (1999: 48). Sincethe return of the French POWs to their home country, a common custom inwarfare but impossible in this case, the pilgrims attempted to consecratethe space as “ours.” In this respect, the place is re-appropriated and implic-itly made French. It is transformed into culturally meaningful landscapeswith the placement of physical artifacts such as a memorial, crosses, signs,and plaques. The aesthetic chosen to mark the place is similar to the aes-thetic used for other war graves sites (battlefields and military cemeteries).The French Square is almost manicured and the regular traces of the rakesare visible on the surface of the mass grave. According to Walter, this tradi-tion created by the British War Graves Commission expresses “respects, a


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loving care, and a sign that those who gave their lives will not be forgotten”(1993: 76). This act of tidying a place can also be seen as a symbolic way ofcreating order out of chaos. Indeed “chaos” (death) is recaptured and givenmeaning through the taming of nature (culture). In addition, we can alsoobserve how the place is made “French,” and how it is framed into a patri-otic canon. For example, the memorial is made of the pink sandstone fromAlsace, which represents a tangible French component in the Rada forest.The embossed map of Alsace-Moselle, as well as the twenty slabs with acity of Alsace-Moselle inscribed on them, are also others means to make theplace “French.” The double cross designed by the Alsatian artist TomiUngerer also reminds the participants and spectators of the identity of theburied men.4 In short, the place is not only made French by inscribing it inthe tradition of erecting war monuments, but is also made Alsatian-Mosel-lan through the uses of regional symbols and images. As Odile Jansen sug-gested, “The staging of the past, making use of the stabilizing function ofsymbols, images, and effects always implies a form of community self- staging” (2005: 163).

Pilgrims are clearly engaged with a process of identity and meaning mak-ing. Although the pilgrims were not moved by the events of World War II orthose of the camp in the same ways, they stood together on that particularsite because something of significance to them, either as individuals or asgroup drew them together. Some participants are bearers of direct memoriesof the events, and others are bearers of “postmemories” (Hirsch 2001), butas a group they indicate an effort to give sense to the past in the situation oftheir collective present. As Ms C told me when asked about her motivationto undertake the journey:

My grandfather is Alsatian and I am born in Strasbourg. I feel at homehere in Alsace. It is a part of the Alsatian history and thus of my history… I am looking for my roots … I want to understand the problem aboutthe Alsatian identity, the love-hate relationship with the Germans, theproblem with the extreme right movement in Alsace … So why Tambov?… because I wanted to get some insight in what happened in Alsace dur-ing the war, I wanted to understand the rift between France and Ger-many, but also to understand how it felt to have been French, German,French … for the people who went through the last century. I think thatthese people represented already Europe, since they had— despite them-



selves—already a double identity and for me, they would have been thebest representatives of Europe. But I understand also that among the fam-ilies war has created sufferings, and with the glazes of the others …incomprehension … So why Tambov? Because this past questions me, Ifeel concerned and … I went to Tambov and then to Oradour5 … to com-pare … I wanted to be able to feel both … The Alsatian memory is in theLimousin … and the Alsatian memory is also in Tambov. At both places,there are monuments, but at one place, in Tambov, they are beloved andat the second place they are hated. … I needed to have a look at bothparts and to get different point of view, I wanted to meet people whowere trapped in their blindness out of hate and people who were blindout of victimization.

Ms C clearly expresses that her motive to undertake a journey to Tambov isto understand her identity. She sees the journey as a way to connect to herheritage. She expresses here a desire for emotional involvement, a need toget in touch with history in a deeper, affective, and personal way. Thisimpulse for personal emotional involvement to the past and identity con-struction was identified as key factors for visiting heritage sites (Buzindeand Santos 2009; Prentice and Anderson 2007; Poria et al. 2003).

In Tambov, the public commemorations function as a matrix of activity,through which the pilgrims express a collective shared knowledge of thepast, on which their sense of unity is based. The claim being dramatizedand asserted here is that Alsatians-Mosellans are “one people” through timeand space, sharing a single and common identity and destiny. The partici-pation in the common rituals and ceremonies of the pilgrimage is an occa-sion in which axiomatic symbols; being an Alsatian-Mosellan, is activatedand used to fuse disparate domains of experience, to dramatize an “imag-ined” version of them and to provide them with a sense of individual andcollective continuity (Myerhoff and Moore 1977). Symbolic tools are usedto sustain the claim: the Alsatian language is spoken or sung and the Alsa-tian and Mosellan flags are exhibited. Beyond providing pilgrims with aplatform to perform their own sense of regional identity, the participationin the pilgrimage provided pilgrims with a collective historical continuity(the sense of being “one people” on the part of the whole group). Here thewhole journey could be seen as social identity making since identity is madethrough the social experiences of undertaking the pilgrimage.


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In this sense, the pilgrimages help the participants to position them-selves in their community as well as in their cultural, social, and physicalworld. As Smith (2006) suggests, heritage is about a sense of place. The par-ticipation in the pilgrimage enables pilgrims to place themselves on a tem-poral and a spatial level. At the temporal level, it provides an individualbiographical continuity (the individual’s sense of unity as a person), and acollective historical continuity (the sense of being “one people” on the partof the whole group). The pilgrimage helps participants to create a sense ofplace (spatial level): their place as Alsatians-Mosellans in the French nation,their place as individuals in their own families, and their place in their cul-tural, social, and physical world. Here the pilgrimage serves not only to“reaffirm community but also to narrow and bound it” (Verdery 1999: 108).Furthermore to embark on a pilgrimage is a way to reassess the place of theirancestors in history. As Verdery points out for the case of burial and rebur-ial of dead bodies, the agency of the pilgrims can be seen as a way to revisenational genealogies, inserting the person as an ancestor more centrally intothe lineage of honored forebears.

Yet pilgrimage is more than a process of identity making and remaking,a cultural tool through which the community defines themselves; it is alsothe emotional experiences of “being.”

Pilgrimage and the Confrontation with Death

Pilgrimages are performative experiences that involve the entire human sen-sorium. The ceremonies taking place on the memorial sites do not only rep-resent the most ritualized part of the pilgrimage, but they also create amoment when the collective grief is the most tangible and explicit. In 2008,during the delivery of the sermon, the priest began by evoking the symbolicage of eighteen, which is not only the age of the national service but also—he stressed—the age of all dreams. He went on by reminding the congrega-tion that the men buried in the Rada forest died alone, without the presenceof their relatives and far away from their fatherland. The underlying mes-sage there was that the notion of a “good” death is incompatible with thefact of dying alone, prematurely, and far from home (see Robben 2010). A“good” death is associated with the presence of a relative or at least the feel-ing that “the time has come.” To emphasize the message, two poems were



read: “We were 18 years old ... or a little more” by André Bechtel and“Deportee” by Jacqueline Lorich.

Excerpt from Bechtel’s poem:

We were 18 years old, or a little more,We loved life, noise, and even a little more,We loved our home, our village, and even a little more, …We loved our fathers, mothers, and much more, …But They broke our dreams, hopes and much more,They took us our joy, our hope, and much more, …Some came back … They were 20 years old, or a little more,They had lost an arm, a leg, and much more,And the other, a thousand or so, never came back,They stayed there, at Stalingrad, at Tambov, in the heart of the vastRussian steppe, …We should remember them much more …

First verse of Leriche’s poem:

No, you are not dead, You, who never came back,From camps and prisons, from obscures fortress,Young trees moved down at the dawn of all promises,No, You are not dead, You, dear Brothers

Both poems convey the idea of bad/good death and function as a catharsis inthe release of strong emotions. The pathos of the poems swept over the audi-ence. All eyes were facing the ground; everybody was avoiding making eyecontact. It seemed that everyone was about to cry. The regrets went to thedead POWs, whose young lives were cut off before they could even begin.Here we are confronted with what Reader called “some nostalgic yearningsfor what has been, as much as for what was: what has been lost is not animagined past, but an imagined future” (Reader and Walter 1993: 232). AsWalter put it, grief for an unknown father, for a brother, for a friend, or a fiancéis not grief for “a mythological version of what was, but grief for what mighthave been; grief not for a lost past, but for a lost future” (Walter 1993: 70).

What is important to note here is that the ceremonies provide thebereaved with an opportunity to confront their sense of loss. My suggestion


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is that the ceremonies at the French Square provide the pilgrims with thepossibility of giving a symbolic sepulcher to the ones who died there. Hencethe ceremonies in the Rada forest could be seen as a re-enactment of theburial process. As Ricœur points out, the sepulcher is not only a place setapart in our cities, called a cemetery, but it also represents the act of bury-ing in itself: “The sepulcher remains because the gesture of burying remains;its path is the very path of mourning that transforms the physical absenceof the lost object into an inner presence. The sepulcher as the material placethus becomes the enduring mark of mourning, the memory-aid of the act ofsepulcher” (2005: 366).

The ceremonies can be seen as a substitute for the missing funerals. Indeedthe POWs who died at the prison camp of Tambov or at the military hospitalin Kirsanov as well as those missing in action (MIAs) did not receive a properfuneral. The fact that the deserters were declared MIAs by the German author-ity, a fact well known by the family, did not either help the families in theirmourning process, because they kept hoping that the MIAs would come backfrom their Soviet captivity. (The last POW came back in 1955.) This hope ofan eventual return did not simplify the families’ mourning.

The orphans interviewed told me the journey was an attempt for themto confront themselves with the loss of their father. Sometimes they are evendriven by the urge to find out the specific location where their father isburied or at least a proof of their death.

Ms B, for instance, an energetic woman in her sixties always wonderedwhere her father, a man her mother seldom spoke of, and whom she neverknew, was buried. During her pilgrimage in 2010 her father’s grave was finallyrevealed by Russian officials. In a moment of great emotion she explained:

I was trying to come across any trace of my father. I was trying to knowwhat happened to him because nobody talked about this period. Mymother didn’t speak about it, nobody spoke about it. And I always feltthe need to know more, to get to know as much as possible becausesomehow we never managed to mourn … so to go there following histrack, going to the place where he had been, where he lost his life …somehow it was a relief for me … I always believed that once in my lifeI would go to Tambov… And in 1995 when I had the opportunity to goI didn’t hesitate. It was so difficult to get there. The tour operators wentto St-Petersburg or Moscow, but not to Tambov … nobody went there.



Mrs D as many others pilgrims was obsessed with not knowing where adead relative lies as the missing gravestone syndrome prevented her frommourning (Young 1993). As Firth suggested a funeral rite is “a social ritepar excellence. Its ostensible object is the dead person, but it benefits not thedead, but the living” (1951: 63). Because no funeral rites had been carriedout, the bereaved relatives were unable to face the reality of death.

For Sheff, rituals perform a vital function, that is “the appropriate dis-tancing of emotion,” since they provide a frame to discharge a recurringemotional distress (1977: 488). Sheff sees rituals as the distanced re-enact-ment of situations of emotional distress that are virtually universal in agiven culture. The ceremonies are regulated emotional catharsis that pro-vide a context that is “both a psychologically enabling and a socially accept-able occasion for repeated catharsis” (Ibid.). As for a funeral that theceremony recreates the words cannot express what is felt. The feelings areexpressed through the ritual. Beyond the formal ceremony with sermons,poems, and the formal laying of a wreath, the ritual is taken over privatelyby the individual mourner. If each pilgrim, as an individual, has his or herown personal objective—which culminates with the realization of the pil-grimage itself—the pilgrimage also creates a group climax during the com-memorative ceremonies. Rituals are unique in that they meet individual andcollective needs simultaneously. Throughout the ritual, individuals aregiven the opportunity to discharge accumulated distress and to create socialsolidarity in the process (Ibid.: 489).

People are undertaking the journeys out of an emotional need and theirfeelings have an effect on their experience and that of the others. During thetime they are physically visiting the special site, the participants are movedby the collective emotions of those around. Indeed, following a personal questthe participant is drawn into the social process of the pilgrimage itself. Thememorial site acts affectingly on the participants. The physicality of heritageplaces elicits an emotional response in people (Smith 2006). Landscapes andplaces become charged with meanings and emotions by those who visit thesite (Walter 1993). As several scholars noted, throughout the nineteenth cen-tury the death of soldiers was framed as sacrifice for the nation and was com-memorated through religious rhetoric (Mosse 1990; Winter and Sivan 1999).Yet the fact that battlefields and military cemeteries were gradually consid-ered as holy places, orientated the visitors’ experience of the place, makingthem think of themselves as pilgrims (Gatewood and Cameron 2004).


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In the Rada forest, the place is furthermore made sacred through theactions of the pilgrims. Pilgrims carry letters, photographs, externalreminder of their relatives, such as for example, a chain bracelet, a pipe, ortake pictures of these items at the French Square or another memorial place.Ms T, as well as three others pilgrims brought soil from Alsace-Moselle anddisperse it on the French Square: “Somehow I took all my family with meto Tambov … we were six brother and sister … I dispersed the soil there …as a way to make peace with this part of history.”

Mr V, for his part, took two or three pipes that belonged to his deceasedfather with him to Tambov.

I brought with me some pipes of my father … Before leaving for Tambovon Saturday morning, I thought that I should take an object that belongedto him with me … so I took the pipes … At the French square, after theceremony when everybody left … it didn’t concern anyone else, did it?… I wanted to be alone. ... For some people, it has no value but for me itwas very important … I thought … here is the pipe my father had in hishand before dying and now the pipe is back in Tambov.

Taking pictures of the pipe at the French Square may be a way of markingthe place, of distinguishing the individual from the thousands of POWs whohad been imprisoned at this prison camp. Here we can really see how thepipe represents the deceased father. Yet, what is amazing here, is the factthat Mr V’s father might have spent “only” one year in Tambov and withregard to his whole life, this “one” year is perceived as determinant andeven as one of the reason to have committed suicide in the 1990s.

With a few exceptions, most of the pilgrims take some soil from thememorial site with them back to France. The symbolism of earth/clay isvery important in the Christian imaginary, since humankind was shapedfrom clay and human beings are said coming from ashes and becomingashes (after their death). Earth can be used for the symbol of death (ashes)as well as birth (clay). Mr S, one of the grand children, farsighted, took someempty jars Bonne maman (a popular jam brand in France) to fill up withsoil from Tambov. He put some soil in the jars symbolizing not only child-hood but also the motherland, which he then took back to Alsace. Here, wecould even interpret Mr S’s gesture as reunifying the dead with the moth-erland. His gesture supports Reader’s idea that the souvenirs collected by



the pilgrims enable them “to carry home a tangible link with the memory,or even the spirit, of the dead” (Reader and Walter 1993: 146).

Several pilgrims took mementos with them to bring back home, oftenflowers or seeds from the plants growing there. So the pilgrimage experiencedoes not end when the participants are back to France. The flowers or seedsare replanted. The dispersion of soil collected at the site of the former prisoncamp or at the French Square usually gives rise to another symbolic cere-mony in France. Ms P dispersed the soil collected at Tambov on her father’sgrave in Alsace in front of her mother and siblings. She also offered a bot-tle containing soil to her aunt, who met her father when he returned fromTambov. This aunt died some days after Ms P’s return. Ms P explained, “asif she was waiting and could die now.”

The thematic of curing or healing of psychological wounds is recurrentin the lore of pilgrimage. On the occasion of medieval pilgrimage, the pil-grim was healed and became healed when she or he arrived at the shrines.It is in the presence of the bones of the Saints that the ritual transformationtook place. In Tambov it is in the presence of the bones of the “sacrificed ofAlsace-Moselle” that the emotional healing might happen.

In the Middle Ages, people made pilgrimage in order to seek miraculoushealing, because medicine at the time was not able to cure them. With theevolution of medicine the process of ritual transformation concerns lessphysical than emotional healing. “Going to special places at particular timesand sharing in an emotional outpouring along with countless others ... pro-vides an emotional outlet and cathartic solution to psychological sufferingsand needs that may not be adequately dealt with by other means” (Readerand Walter 1993: 230).

These features permeate the pilgrims’ interpretation of the outcome ofthe pilgrimage. They said that the pilgrimage allowed them to be able to“come full circle,” “complete my life,” “grant a vow,” “be able to die inpeace,” “fulfill my duty.” For the interviewees who had a relative impris-oned in the camp of Tambov, paying respect had a particular meaning.Repeatedly, they were talking of fulfilling a yearning, a vow, of completingtheir life, of being able to die in peace. As Walter reminds us: “They are pil-grims, not tourists. Pilgrims talk of their journey as completing their life, ofbeing able now to die in peace, tourists do not” (1993: 87).

Ms O, a fifty-year-old woman undertook also the journey after the deathof her father “to tread where he trod,” even if her mother did not see the


Florence Fröhlig

point of raking up the past. In the survey, one recurrent factor to explainthe reason for making the pilgrimage is the “yearning to treading placeswhere fathers trod” (i.e., fathers, uncles, grand uncles, grandfathers). Itmight be a way for the pilgrims to feel that they are physically not so faraway from their relatives and a way of showing to themselves and to theworld that they care.

Author: “You wrote in the survey that your motivation to undertake thepilgrimage was “to tread where your father trod.”

Ms O: “Yes, it was to do a full circle … Since my father rarely spokeabout it … I don’t know if he would have like to go back, I don’t thinkso … for me, it was important to go there, to know where he has beenand … to discover the environment. And in fact, the more research I do,the more I realize that the one who came back must have had a strongcharacter … an exceptional force of character to come back … well tocome back and survive.”

Pilgrimage can be considered a process of coming to terms with the painof bereavement by confronting the sense of loss. As Lloyd put it, “Pilgrim-age enabled relatives to confront their grief for the dead and to let go of thepast” (1998: 137). Here we can observe that secular pilgrimage performsroles similar to religious ones by providing the bereaved relatives with asense of completeness and fulfillment, of making whole that which was pre-viously in some way incomplete.

Conclusion

Throughout the journey, the pilgrims inevitably engage with a sense of thepast, they remember and reassess the meaning of the past in terms of thesocial, cultural, and political needs of the present. In other words, theiragency is an attempt to rectify their worlds. By undertaking the pilgrimage,participants are given the opportunities to remember, commemorate, com-municate, and pass on knowledge and memories of forced enlistment. Butabove all, the participants are given the possibility to confront their grieffor the dead or their sense of injustice and to let go of the past. During the



pilgrimage, pilgrims are creating new shared experiences, meanings, andvalues. When returning to France the individuals embody a new experienceof Tambov, and become bearers of an appeased memory.

To undertake a pilgrimage to Tambov enables us to connect, what theIsraeli philosopher Avishai Margalit calls “the spheres of ethics and morals”(2002: 6–8). Pilgrimages, beyond establishing and reinforcing our spatialand temporal place, do enable us to connect and regulate our thick relations(to those with a shared past) and thin relations (connecting us to those whoare strangers or remote to each other).

Notes

1. The prison camp is situated in the Rada forest nearby the town of Tambov, which lies500 kilometers south of Moscow.

2. According to the last studies, from the 130,000 young men enlisted from 1942 to 1944,40,000 did not came back. Régis Baty (1998) estimate that 10,500 men could havedied at the camp in Tambov.

3. The order of forced conscription was promulagated on 25 August 1942 by theGauleiter Wagner for Alsace. The same order was promulgated on 29 August forMoselle by the Gauleiter Burchkel and 30 August by the Gauleiter Simon for the Lux-embourg. The Germans introduced the principle of Sippenhaftung, which made theparents responsible if the conscript was insubordinate or he deserted.

4. The double cross symbolizes the fate of Alsace-Lorraine during World War II, sharedbetween Germany and France. Hence one cross represents Germany and the otherFrance as families often had to mourn two sons, one who died in the French army andone in the German army.

5. In June 1944, the Waffen division Das Reich brutally killed 642 people in the villageof Oradour-sur-Glane. Fourteen Alsatian men among the German division were pres-ent during the massacre (thirteen forced enlisted and one voluntary).


Florence Fröhlig

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re-visiting the site of the former soviet prison camp

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