Kalamaja Cemetery

The Kalamaja cemetery, in Tallinn in Estonia was once the city's oldest existing cemetery, located in the suburb of Kalamaja in the north of the city. It contained thousands of graves of ethnic Estonian and Swedish residents of Tallinn and stood for at least 400 years, from the 16th century to 1964, when it was completely flattened and destroyed by the Soviet occupation authorities governing the country at that time.
The former cemetery is now a public park.

Origins and use

The exact origins of the cemetery are not completely clear, but historians place its foundation to sometime between the 15th and 16th centuries. It was the principal burial ground of the lower-class ethnic Swedish and Estonians living in or around Tallinn.
Until the mid to late 19th century the majority of residents of Tallinn were Baltic Germans who had their own separate graveyards within the city walls until 1774, and their own separate cemeteries outside the city after that.
Area of the cemetery was 6.7 hectares in 1940.
Until its destruction the cemetery had tens of thousands of graves standing of various historical figures from Estonia's history.

Destruction by Soviet authorities in 1964

In 1964 the cemetery was entirely flattened under the order of Soviet authorities. Gravestones were used to build walls along the ports and sidewalks in other parts of the city and no trace of the cemetery was left standing.
Soviet forces in a coordinated effort to remove all traces of the past, non-ethnic Russian inhabitants of Tallinn also destroyed two further 18th century cemeteries in the city, in the suburbs of Kopli and Mõigu which belonged to the ethnic Baltic German communities. In 1955, the Old Roman-Catholic cemetery in the Juhkentali subdistrict was destroyed. In 1963, the Old Jewish cemetery in the Veerenni subdistrict was destroyed.
In contrast the Russian Orthodox Cemetery, also established in the 18th century, south of the old town of Tallinn, was left standing.

Current status

Presently the former area of the cemetery is a public park, with no immediate visible indication of its previous status. However a small plaque with a very short description has been put on the site on the side of a restored bell tower.
The only surviving evidence of those who were interred there consists of the parish registers of burials and some old detailed maps of the area in the Tallinn city archives.