Soldiers carry out orders given them in the line of duty, so they cannot be possibly held answerable for any mistakes resulting from their superiors’ misjudgment. This old truth which applies to all those buried in foreign territories, and it seems to have been finally comprehended in Ukraine.
Evidence of this is the opening of a Wehrmacht cemetery in the Ukrainian village of Potelychy, in Lviv oblast. The place used to accommodate a large field hospital, leaving some 400 German graves. Now the premises have been renovated and a marker set up. Within the next 15 years the burial ground is expected to accommodate the remains of another 10,000 German combatants, making the site Ukraine’s largest German war memorial.
All contracting works are sustained by the Ukrainian side, but all financing and other arrangements are being handled by the German Labor Union.
The remains of German soldiers will start being transferred to the new cemetery in the nearest future. GLU will conduct extensive search in Western Ukraine, for its records list only 4,000 Wehrmacht burials in this country, while historians point to approximately 400,000. They say that a war can be considered finished only after the last fallen solider has been buried.
Photo by Mykhailo Dashkovych, The Day:
At the opening of the German cemetery







