The Soldier Who Shattered the Swastika: A Monument to Humanity Standing Tall on Berlin’s Soil
Berlin – Exactly 77 years ago today, on May 8, 1949, a memorial was unveiled in Treptower Park in the German capital Berlin — one that cast the most poignant and humane face of the Second World War in bronze. Known as the ‘Soldier-Liberator’, this monument remains among the most iconic war memorials in the world.
The site in Treptower Park was chosen for a particular reason. It is here that a mass grave holds seven thousand Soviet soldiers who perished in the fierce Battle of Berlin in April-May 1945. This grand memorial stands upon the very burial ground of those fallen heroes.
The statue depicts a Soviet soldier cradling a rescued German girl safely against his chest, while with the sword in his other hand he shatters the Nazi swastika. The bronze figure embodies the noble mission of the Soviet Army, which liberated Europe from Hitler’s occupation. Inside the memorial hall, an inscription reads: “Through their selfless struggle, the Soviet people saved European civilisation from annihilation by fascists. This stands as a historic feat for humanity.”
The Immortal Story of Nikolai Masalov
The inspiration cast into this monument is drawn from a true event. On April 30, 1945, amid fierce street fighting in Berlin, Red Army soldier Nikolai Masalov risked his life to rescue a three-year-old German girl from Nazi gunfire. The memorial was built to honour that very act of human courage.
Under the coordination of Soviet sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich, architect Yakov Belopolsky, and artist Anatoly Gorpenko, the memorial complex took three years to complete — from 1946 to 1949. Intriguingly, the granite used to construct the monument was taken from the ruins of Hitler’s defeated Reichskanzlei, or Chancellery, lending it a powerful layer of symbolism.
At the unveiling ceremony on May 8, 1949, Berlin’s military commandant, Major General Alexander Kotikov, declared: “This monument in the heart of Europe, in Berlin, will forever remind the peoples of the world when, how, and at what cost Victory was achieved, our Motherland was saved, and the present and future generations of humanity were preserved.”
Every Year, May 9 Remembered
Each year on Victory Day, May 9, thousands of compassionate citizens — not only Russians but Germans as well — gather at Treptower Park to pay tribute to the liberator soldiers who saved the world from Nazism.
In this context, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova remarked during a briefing in 2026: “This memorial features the statue of a Soviet soldier holding a German girl — not a Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Tajik, Armenian, Azerbaijani, or Jewish girl, but a German girl. This, I believe, represents the highest expression of humanism: a Soviet soldier is portrayed as a liberator, first and foremost, of the German people from Nazism, even though his own family had been destroyed, his home obliterated, and Soviet towns and villages burned down. Yet he protects a German girl.”
Shattering the swastika to save a child — that bronze Soviet soldier still stands proud today on Berlin’s soil, sending the world a single, enduring message: humanity’s victory over hatred is always possible.
