Twelve Responses to Tragedy, or the Yalta Memorial, is located in the Yalta Memorial Garden on Cromwell Road adjacent to the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington. It commemorates people displaced as a result of the Yalta Conference at the conclusion of the Second World War. Created by the British sculptor Angela Conner, the work consists of twelve bronze busts atop a stone base. The memorial was dedicated in 1986 to replace a previous memorial (also by Conner) from 1982 that had been repeatedly damaged by vandalism.
The original memorial showed a sphere kept in perpetual motion by jets of water. The present memorial consists of a stone column upon a brick plinth; upon the column sits a bronze bust of 12 conjoined heads of men, women, and children.
On the south side of the memorial at ground level inscription on stone reads:
THIS SCULPTURE/ WAS DEDICATED BY/ THE BISHOP OF FULHAM/ ON 2ND AUGUST 1986 TO/ REPLACE THE PREVIOUS/ MEMORIAL DEDICATED BY/ THE BISHOP OF LONDON/ ON 6TH MARCH 1982 WHICH/ WAS LATER DESTROYED BY/ VANDALS TO WHOM THE/ TRUTH WAS INTOLERABLE
An inscription on a curved stone plinth on the east side of the memorial reads:
THIS MEMORIAL WAS PLACED/ HERE BY MEMBERS OF ALL PARTIES/ IN BOTH HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT/ AND BY MANY OTHER SYMPATHISERS/ IN MEMORY OF THE COUNTLESS/ INNOCENT MEN WOMEN AND/ CHILDREN FROM THE SOVIET UNION/ AND OTHER EAST EUROPEAN STATES/ WHO WERE IMPRISONED AND DIED AT THE HANDS OF COMMUNIST/ GOVERNMENTS AFTER BEING/ REPATRIATED AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR/ MAY THEY REST IN PEACE
The inscription on the memorial was personally approved by Margaret Thatcher during her tenure as Prime Minister.
The Yalta Conference, held 4–11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union to discuss the postwar reorganization of Europe. As a result of a deal made with Stalin, two million people were forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union at the end of World War II, many to certain death.
The idea for a memorial was raised in the 1970,to the “… memory of the hundreds of thousands of innocent people who were forcibly repatriated by the Allies to the Soviet and Yugoslav authorities at the end of the Second World War, a crime that was carefully hushed up at the time and even concealed from Parliament for fear of the outcry that would have resulted” It was opposed by the Foreign Office because it was thought to criticize the past actions of the British government.
The memorial was repeatedly vandalized and was eventually destroyed after being cut in two by an electric stone-cutting saw in the autumn of 1982.This memorial was dedicated in the same place as the previous memorial on 2 August 1986
