Twelve Responses to Tragedy

Plans for a memorial were initiated after a letter was written to The Spectator in the 1970s signed by Richard West, Patrick Marnham and Auberon Waugh who proposed that a memorial be erected 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". A later letter to The Times calling for a memorial was signed by politicians Bernard Braine, Jo Grimond, Donald J. Stewart, John Mackintosh, James Molyneaux, Gwynfor Evans, Nicholas…

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: An inscription on a curved stone plinth on the east side of the memorial reads: The inscription on the memorial was personally approved by Margaret Thatcher during her tenure as Prime Minister. The memorial has been described as a war memorial as it was created in response to events that arose out of the conclusion of the Second World War.