In the 1930s, political and ethnic cleansing began in St Petersburg. Detainees were gathered in the basement of the so-called Great House, which was the headquarters of the NKVD, and mass murdered there. The remains of the victims were then taken to the forest in the village of Levashovo (about 20-30 km from St Petersburg) and buried in mass graves. This was a military zone and the area was closely guarded. The corpses of the victims were brought to Levashovo until 1954. In 1989, mass rehabilitation of the victims of Stalin's purges began. From January 1990, the St Petersburg press began to print lists of the victims. By 28.04.1997, a list of 12,836 names of those executed between 1937 and 1938 had been published, including 2,039 Poles. It has now been established that the remains of 46,771 people lie buried in the Levaszow forest, in an area of 6.5 hectares fenced off by a massive wooden fence. About 8,000 of them are Poles, the rest are mainly Russians, followed by Belarusians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns and Jews. Most of the Poles were murdered in October or November 1937, but they were also murdered in 1938. It is said that the victims were buried in different graves, respecting the division of nationalities. Since 1990, the Levaszov cemetery has been open to visitors. The townspeople spontaneously started to place cards and makeshift plaques with the names of their loved ones on the trees. More permanent commemorations followed - metal and marble photo plaques and crosses. A huge guillotine monument was erected in front of the entrance to the cemetery. At the entrance to the necropolis stands the former guardhouse, which has been converted into a small one-room museum with a modest exhibition. Next to it is the former guard tower, which was converted into a bell tower in 1991 - anyone entering the cemetery can pull the string and activate the bell as a sign of remembrance for the victims. No exhumations have been carried out in the cemetery, only boreholes, confirming the presence of human remains here. Consequently, the outline of the graves is unknown. The Polish memorial sign, one of the first national signs, was erected in 1993 on the initiative of the Memorial Association, the Cultural and Educational Association "Polonia", the Union of Poles and the General Consulate of the Republic of Poland in St Petersburg. The author of the monument is Leon Piskorski. The irregular block of boulders bears the inscription "We forgive and ask for forgiveness" (this formula, taken from the letter of the Polish bishops to the German bishops, arouses surprise and incomprehension in many people). In 1998, the monument was completed with a block with the national emblem, the design of which was drawn up by the architect Jarosław Skrzypczyk; the work was financed by the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites. The present monument consists of two parts: a stone block with a cross resting on it and a stone plaque with an inscription in Polish and Russian "To the memory of Polish victims of mass repressions shot in 1937 - 1938. Compatriots". On 30.10.1997, a monument funded by the local branch of the Congress of Jews in Russia was unveiled in the cemetery. It was made by Edward Zarycki, a prominent sculptor of the Mosaic faith, who prides himself on his Polish roots. In the following years, other memorials were erected in Lewaszów, including another 'Polish' monument, on which the names of some 40 murdered Poles were engraved in Cyrillic script, and on 28.10.2010 a monument was unveiled dedicated to 'Catholics of the USSR - victims of political repression'. Its erection was initiated by Father Krzysztof Pożarski, who was also the author of the monument's design. The monument was planned to include the names of 12 Catholic clergymen of different nationalities who were murdered in Levashovo, but due to opposition from the authorities the inscription is generic.