Rev. Albert Mazurenko, the senior pastor of the Lutheran Church of Irkutsk in SE Siberia, is a member of the Interfaith Coordination Council under the Irkutsk Oblast Legislative Assembly. On July 19, 2021, on Pastor Albert’s initiative, the council met for a roundtable discussion on the topic “A Necropolis in an Urban Area as a Commemoration Site.” As part of the meeting, the council members and Mayor of Irkutsk Ruslan Bolotov visited one of the city’s public areas, a historical and memorial complex called Ierusalimskaya Gora (“The Jerusalem Hill”). After visiting the territory of the former Ierusalimskoye Cemetery, the group met in the Legislative Assembly building to discuss the further development of the memorial complex.
The historical cemetery was closed in the 1930’s. In the 1950’s, the area was redeveloped as a recreation park which declined decades later. It wasn’t until 2017 that municipal authorities started to partially restore the grounds to their original purpose as a site of commemoration.