At each gulag in Vorkuta, and there were dozens of them, there were burial sites for dead prisoners. Not all of these sites were regular cemeteries; sometimes the dead were buried in earth pits near the camps and mines - the prisoners' places of work.

Lagrangers who died of starvation and exhaustion and those who were shot for trying to escape were buried directly in the ground, without coffins. Their graves were nameless, without crosses, marked only by a post with the prisoner's number nailed to it.

Those who died in "free range" (i.e. prisoners of war outside the fenced area of the camps, who were not subject to the rigours of the camp, but were forced to live in a particular place) were buried in coffins; their graves had nameplates and modest crosses.

Most of the prisoners' burial places have not been preserved to the present day in such a condition that they could be marked and tidied up, but thanks to the activities of the local "Memorial", not all the burial places of the campers have been forgotten. Thanks to the work of its members, 14 cemeteries were located at the end of the 20th century. Poles visiting the vicinity of Vorkuta in the 1990s and in the first two decades of the 21st century provided the following data on the cemeteries of Vorkuta:

- the best preserved is the cemetery at mine No. 29 (now Jur-Shor), where 60 or 66 executed participants of the 1953 revolt were buried. In 1989, Lithuanian Stanislavas Grenciavicius began to clean up the site on his own;

- The cemeteries of mines No. 7 and No. 8 are in good condition;

- The cemetery of mines No. 3 and No. 4 is crossed by a road, the so-called "Kolcevaja", dividing the necropolis into two parts;

- Only 6 graves remain from the two cemeteries of mine No. 40, which are fenced off with a provisional fence and there is a foundation for the placement of a memorial cross; a large workers' housing estate has been built on the remaining area of these cemeteries.