Getman Painting - Eternal Memory in the Permafrost

Death was a frequent event in Stalinist-era forced-labor camps.  This image, of a Nikolai Getman painting, depicts a GULAG funeral conducted by prisoners.

The Global Museum on Communism - The Gulag.org - tells us more about the meaning of this Getman work:

The painting depicts both the burial of a Russian convict and a Japanese POW and the observance of two religions, Russian Orthodoxy and Buddhism. The prisoners present at the ceremony are not clerics, but rather inmates, who felt the need to provide a respectful burial for the dead.

In the extreme winter cold, bodies were placed beneath a block of ice because digging graves in the permafrost was too difficult.  The funeral shown here provides an example of the cross-cultural unity Gulag prisoners developed in the face of their common fate.

Getman called the painting, depicted in this image, “Eternal Memory in the Permafrost.”