About the museum
History of the ALZHIR Museum
This is where the notorious Akmola Camp for Wives of Traitors of the Motherland, ALZHIR, was located, and where more than 18,000 women were held over the years. These were women whose only guilt was that they were wives of arrested and executed "enemies of the people."
Held here in confinement were Aziza Ryskulova and her mother Arifa Yesengulova, Damesh Zhurgenyeva, Rabiga Asfendiyarova, the singer Lidia Ruslanova, the silent film actress Lidia Frenkel, the writer Galina Serebryakova, women from the family of the executed Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Kira Andronikashvili, wife of the writer Boris Pilnyak, Evgenia Lurie, wife of the writer Yuri Trifonov, and the mothers of Bulat Okudzhava and Maya Plisetskaya.
Memorial Sites
The museum and memorial complex consists of several museum sites.
The "Stalin carriage," or "krasnukha," was used to transport exiles and convicts. Memorial markers installed by the embassies of foreign states commemorate women of 62 nationalities who were prisoners of ALZHIR.
The "Arch of Sorrow" monument symbolizes the entrance to sacred ground where two worlds, the living and the dead, meet. The monument depicts a woman grieving for her dead husband and lost children. Passing under the arch, one must bow one's head, paying tribute to those who perished in the tragic years of repression.
The "Tears" stele is dedicated to all who endured the hell of the camps. It depicts a map of the Gulag and the names of 11 camps located in the territory of Kazakhstan and subordinate to Karlag. The tears of women and children behind barbed wire are the tragic fate of the camp's women prisoners and their descendants.
Memory of the Camp
The composition "Despair and Helplessness" embodies hopelessness, the loss of paths to freedom, and the doom of helplessness and despair.
The composition "Struggle and Hope" depicts a woman with hopes and aspirations of breaking free from captivity.
The barrack is a building where women lived who were regarded as "socially dangerous and capable of anti-Soviet actions." The barrack features the diorama "Removal of Children from the Women Prisoners of the ALZHIR Camp."
Alash Park covers an area of about 1.5 hectares. At one time, the camp's women prisoners grew a fruit orchard on this land, and it is now being restored. The Wall of Memory contains the names of more than 7,000 women who served their sentences in the ALZHIR camp.
The Museum Building and Exhibition
The museum building is shaped like a truncated cone, a kind of casket of secrets, a keeper of sorrow. The building has no windows; light falls on the exhibits from above, as if lifting the veil of mystery. The entrance to the museum is through a tunnel whose walls bear paintings reflecting the difficult period in the life of the Kazakh people during the years of mass political repression.
The museum's exhibition is located on two floors. The Alash Hall presents the history of Kazakhstan from its incorporation into the Russian Empire, as well as the Soviet period. The ALZHIR Hall is dedicated to the history of the Akmola Camp.
The Deportation exhibition reflects mass political repression against entire peoples. More than 1.3 million people were deported to Kazakhstan; Germans, Turks, Koreans, Poles, Chechens, and Crimean Tatars were subjected to forced resettlement.
ALZHIR is one of the museums in Kazakhstan dedicated to political events. The shared memory of times lived together is the foundation on which interethnic harmony rests.