One of the most enduring images of the Battle of Stalingrad is the photo of a fountain featuring a group of children holding hands and dancing around a crocodile. The fountain is damaged but more or less whole, whereas all around it stands in ruins. For years many tourists to Stalingrad/Volgograd searched for the famous fountain only to find out that it no longer exists; it was demolished after the war.

However the symbolic fountain has since been recreated and reinstalled in 2013 outside the city's railway station. A replica was also installed outside the ruins of the mill at the Battle of Stalingrad Museum-Panorama Complex. The fountain is often referred to as the Barmaley Fountain from a Soviet fairy-tale when a boy called Barmaley was eaten by a giant crocodile.