In addition to Donskoy Monastery's necropolis there is also a newer cemetery just outside the monastery's walls. The New Donskoe Cemetery was opened in the late 19th century and holds the graves of several notable figures. On a darker note, the cemetery was also used to bury the victims of political purges of the 1930s in a mass grave on which there is now a memorial. The cemetery's church is St Serafim of Sarov's Church which was built between 1904 and 1914. The church was later closed and redeveloped as a crematorium in the Soviet years, becoming the first in Moscow. Today part of the building has been returned as a church and its dome and cross were replaced.