Cups of Sorrow

While searching a Wehrmacht-/Red Army POW Camp this spring I found several enamelled drinking cups used by the Soviet POWs, and last week I had them cleaned up from rust and crud and I preserved them.

I was wondering what I was going to do with them, and it became clear to me as I walked by one of my display cabinets and glanced at a small diorama I made a few years back.

In the same camp I had found a blue enamel cup laying on the surface and I had made a diorama inside the cup of the site where I had found it.

I took three of the best looking cups and prepared them to become dioramas. I wanted to keep them simple but at the same time to tell a story.

I wanted them to remind the viewers about the faith of the Soviet POWs, and about the shamefull act the Norwegian government did to their memorials in the early days of the Cold War, when they under the "Operation Asphalt" relocated all the POW gravesites and destroyed the monuments and memorials the POWs had built.

​Pics of the four dioramas follows below. I hope you like them :)

"The Forgotten Cemetery":

This diorama shows a forgotten cemetery where the wooden crosses are rotting away.

Wooden grave marker.

"The Fallen Star":

The destruction of prisoner memorials in Norway in the early 1950s angered many.

"Operation Asphalt" :

I found inspiration for this one at the site where a large stone memorial was blown up with handgrenades.

"Comrades - May 1945" :

A liberated Red Army man saying goodbye to his comrades.