Ekaterina Maximova

In the Sverdlovsk region, vandals destroyed the burial sites of repressed Poles. The president of the Polish society «Polaros» Marina Lukas told Novye Izvestia that we are talking about two monuments in the villages of Kostousovo and Ozernoye, installed at the mass graves of Poles. And the desecration of memorable places is clearly not a spontaneous, but a well—thought-out action.

«In Kostousovo, the nameplates were screwed on, the bolts were unscrewed and the nameplates were removed. That is, they were walking with the tool, not just some passerby poked around. In Ozernoye, the plaques were cemented. And they were ripped out. I had to crush the cement with something, you can't do it with your bare hands, » Marina Lucas clarified and briefly told the story of the burials on The Urals.

«Both places where monuments are installed were once cemeteries. Poles were buried there, who in the winter of the 40th year were deported to The Urals from the Volyn region (after the annexation of the Volyn province to the USSR). Whole trains with Polish families arrived in Kostousovo at that time. And people lived in these villages, worked on an equal basis with everyone. Poles, mostly, were sent to logging. Not many survived until 1944, when the Soviet government allowed the settlers to return to their homeland. Hunger, cold. The elderly, children, and women died most often, » Marina Lukas continues.

Children who were able to return to Poland, eventually organized the union of former kostousov and ozertsovtsy. And when the Iron Curtain collapsed, the descendants of the settlers began to come to the Urals. In 1997, a monument was erected in Ozernoye. In 2007, a memorial place was built in Kostousovo, where until that time there was just a wooden cross.

«The goal was to put memorials to those people who died on foreign soil. We had 54 names of the deceased on the monument in Ozernoye, but that's not all. Only those who could remember. Poles came, made friends with the villagers, communicated with the elderly — witnesses of those events. And in People went to Poland to visit them. The connection was close. And I am sure that the locals could not do this — desecrate the monuments. Everyone knows the story. The head of the district informed me about the incident, » says Marina Lucas.

Candidate of Legal Sciences, associate Professor, head of the ANO «Center for European Information» Nikolay Toporin called what is happening «a purely negative phenomenon.»

«It does not paint those people who staged these actions. No matter what motives they are guided by. Demolishing tombstones is unacceptable. Whoever was buried there — Poles, Jews, Germans, Russians… To fight with the dead is not to respect yourself. And to frame the country, to shame. Absolutely unacceptable. But, unfortunately, there are vandals in our country, although we have always treated burials with respect. And the wave of such incidents causes the deepest regret and shame, » commented Toporin.

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