Visiting the "Grave of our Fathers"

My co-worker Myrza took me into the mountains to the Ata-Bayit memorials--translated to English, Ata Bayit means the "Grave of our Fathers."  The story begins with the woman pictured below.

The woman in the picture's father (his image is above hers) confessed something horrible to her on his death bed.  In 1938, while a member of Stalin's secret police, he witnessed his fellow officers murder 138 people near the village of Chong Tash.  He told her that she should let people know what had happened when it was a safer time.  Right after the fall of the Soviet Union, she felt she could disclose her father's secret.  And she did so to the man in the upper right hand corner of the picture...a KGB agent she felt could be trusted with the secret.  He went to the site where the killings were alleged to have occurred and found the mass grave that contained these bodies.  138 Kyrgyz nationals, Jewish leaders, members of the Chinese community and others who Stalin felt were threats to the Soviet state were murdered at the Ata-Bayit site. Once the location of the bodies was discovered, they were exhumed and they were re-buried and a memorial was created to them meters away from where the atrocities had been committed.  If the woman had died before she had disclosed her secret, the site of this atrocity might never have been known. Those who were murdered, of course, had done nothing.  Many were loyal Soviets who simply had tried to maintain the identity of the Kyrgyz people; for example, one of the murdered was the creator of the modern Kyrgyz alphabet, an act that Stalin felt was anti-Soviet.

Monument to the Kyrgyz martyrs

Depiction of the events of 1938

Sadly, the events of 1938 aren't the only ones commemorated at this site.  In 2010, protesters marched through Ala-Too Square in Bishkek to protest the corrupt and authoritarian President of that time.  The President's security forces fired upon the protesters, killing 70.  My friend Myrza knew several of the martyrs and himself was part of the protests.  The President was eventually removed from office, but not after uprisings and violence across the country that killed over 1000.  The Grave of our Fathers also memorializes the victims of 2010.

One of Myrza's friends who was killed in the 2010 protests.

View of the memorial.

As we were leaving the Grave of our Fathers, a bus loaded with school children who had been touring the site departed as we walked by.  "Let's hope these students will learn from their visit and hopefully we will never have to add another section in a future year to this memorial,"  Myrza remarked.  Yes, Myrza, let us hope.

Student field trip departing the Grave of our Fathers