Risti railway station was the place where most people from Läänemaa – almost 3000 people – were deported to Siberia. The monument designed by Viljar Ansko “The railway rails remember…” has been placed on a small abandoned platform with stone stairs on both sides.
Four rails reach for the sky in the four corners of the platform. The rails are joined into a cross with two horizontal bars just before the top. At night the monument is illuminated diagonally by two spotlights installed inside the railway platform. The height of the monument is almost 13 metres. Besides commemorating the mass deportations in the recent history, the cross also symbolises the history of the small railway town – Risti.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.