Memorial erected in Ukraine to honor Turkish soldiers

Another mass grave of soldiers of the Ottoman Empire was discovered in Ukraine and a memorial was erected to honor them.

According to Report’s Eastern European bureau, the graves of 49 Turkish soldiers captured during the war between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire in 1877-1881 are located in the Stryzhavka settlement of Ukraine’s Vinnytsia oblast.

According to the information given by the Vinnytsia regional administration, the Ottoman soldiers who were captured by the Russian Empire at that time were taken to different places of the empire. 49 of them died in Vinnytsia and were buried there. When the mass grave was in danger of disappearing, a small monument was erected in its place by a Polish nobleman, but it later fell into disrepair. Recently, a memorial has been erected at that place at the initiative of the grandson of that nobleman, Henrik Groholksy from Poland, with the support of the chairman of the Azerbaijan Society of the Vinnytsia oblast Alish Safarov and the city deputy Teymur Abushov.

Henrik Groholsky, Alish Safarov, representatives of the Turkish and Azerbaijani embassies, President of the Assembly of Nations of Ukraine Rovshan Taghiyev, representatives of the Jewish and Polish communities, clergy of the Roman Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, representatives of Muslim clergy, the head of the Department for Nationalities and Religions of the Vinnytsia Regional Military Administration, Ihor Saletskyi, and local district administration officials attended the inauguration ceremony of the memorial.

The director of Vinnytsia Museum, Oleksandr Vdovychenko, informed the participants about the history of the memorial, the destruction and concealment of the history of the monument in its place during the totalitarian regime of the USSR, etc.