Pitäjänmäen sankarihautamuistomerkki / Pitäjänmäki Soldiers’ Memorial

The memorial, a massive stone slab, is located in a well-kept veterans’ cemetery. A relief has been cut on the surface of the horizontal slab, depicting two soldiers kneeling in prayer. They personify the Winter and Continuation Wars; the soldier wearing a helmet, winter clothes and a snow cape represents those who fell in the 1939-1940 war and the other one, wearing a uniform of the 1936 model reminds of the losses suffered in the Continuation War. The relief is figurative only when the symbolic content of its details so requires; the intention is to convey a intense sense of patriotism and devotion. The text “Pro Patria 1939-1945” has been cut on the front of the stone. The work is made of granite. It was erected in 1968.

The work doesn’t belong to the collections of the Helsinki Art Museum.