Children’s playground in a Volyn village built by… the Germans

Lutsk – In the village of Laskiv in Volodymyr-Volynsky district Karl-Ernst Mueller is considered a friend. He is a nephew of the dead German soldier and was called after his uncle. Every year, since 2005 he comes to the village where his uncle was buried… This year Ernst has come with his brother Michael and his colleague Rainer Kalwit. The uncle of Karl-Ernst and Michael was an ordinary soldier of the German army which started the 1941 triumphant blitzkrieg as they thought back then. Mueller’s brothers in arms informed his relatives in Dresden about the details of his death (the soldier died from gangrene resulting from a leg wound). They took a photo of his shot car and of his grave with one of the Laskiv houses in the background.

After the war the German soldier’s grave turned to be in the middle of a kolkhoz field. However, there were people who remembered roughly this place and showed it when another Ernst Mueller came to the village. The guest explained that the Germans are not used to disturbing the dead. That is why they simply made a symbolic grave on the local cemetery with the signature “Ernst” instead of digging the field. The relatives of the deceased come there to commemorate him. Karl-Ernst worked as a municipal police officer in Zwickau. Now Rainer Kalwit has replaced him in that position. The guests of Laskiv stay at the simple peasant’s houses. This way they have resolved the problem of reconciliation between two nations, at least, at that level. Mueller brothers told their story to the local German media and shared Laskiv’s problems as well. When the people in Zwickau found out that the Ukrainians looked after the German soldiers’ graves they decided to thank them. However, not only the local inhabitants of Zwickau raised the money for a children’s playground in Laskiv but the whole of Saxony!

The equipment for the playground which adorned the village was ordered in Novovolynsk for the German money. The children’s slide has a plate that reads: “In memory of the soldier Ernst owing to whom we have become friends. Let us forget the wounds of the past.” The children who came to the playground opening probably saw euros for the fist time in their life. The guests from Germany gave 5 euros, souvenirs and toys to every little participant of the holiday.