Photo survey of the heritage of Smarhon’ District 2016: Bahushy, Navaspask, Markoutsy, Ukrapjenka, Kalpjaja
Фотавандроўка па спадчыне Смаргоньскага раёна 2016 г.: Багушы, Наваспаск, Маркоўцы, Украпенка, Калпяя
World War I cemeteries (part LXVI): German cemetery on the outskirts of Markoutsy. This cemetery is unusually full of the remains of unknown soldiers. See also photos of the day for February 28, 2022 for the German cemetery in the village.
From September 1915 to November 1917 the German, Austrian and Russian imperial armies, indifferent to the fate of the Belarusian nation, contested part of the World War I Eastern Front on a static southwest to northeast line across Belarusian lands. According to Belarusian photographer-historian Uladzimir Bahdanau, during that time the German, Austrian and Russian imperial armies established more than 300 military cemeteries along this section of the front. Estimates vary from 106 to more than 150 German cemeteries which remain or whose former sites are locatable.
After World War I the newly-formed German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge — VDK or “Volksbund”) paid the government of the Second Polish Republic to look after German war cemeteries on Polish territory. Between 1921 and the joint Nazi-Soviet invasion of September 1939 Polish territory included the western Belarusian lands (thus Markoutsy). The Poles undertook careful exhumations and where necessary reburied soldiers’ remains under new concrete crosses or tombstones, with inscriptions in Polish.
In stark contrast, at no time did the Soviet regime show interest in honoring Russian imperial army graves in territories under Soviet occupation. After occupying the western Belarusian lands when it invaded Poland in September 1939 together with Nazi Germany and again after driving the Germans out in 1944, the Soviet regime neglected, or allowed the destruction of, World War I cemeteries there. Some local Belarusian authorities continue to allow depredation of German World War I cemeteries to this day, for instance in Bartashy (Shchuchyn District) in 2018.
Since the collapse of the Soviet empire, the Volksbund has joined the efforts of Belarusian volunteers and local historians to put some of the German World War I cemeteries in Belarus in order, as here in Markoutsy.
Могілкі Першай сусьветнай вайны (частка LXVI): нямецкія могілкі на ўскраіне в. Маркоўцы. Гэтыя могілкі надзвычайна поўныя рэшткаў невядомых салдатаў. Гл. ткасама фотаздымкі дня 28 лютага 2022 г. для здымкі нямецкіх могілак у вёсцы.
