Austria has examined nearly 90,000 graves of Soviet soldiers who died during and after World War II, among whom more than 11,000 were identified as Ukrainians.
This work was carried out by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for War Research (BIK) on behalf of the Austrian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ukrinform reports citing APA.
“Contrary to popular belief, the Red Army was a multinational and multi-ethnic group that included Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Belarusians, Moldovans, Caucasian, and Siberian peoples, who quite quickly occupied half of the territory of Austria,” said historian Stefan Karner, BIK founder.
As part of a project to mark the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the liberation of Austria by the Red Army, the graves of about 90,000 Soviet soldiers who died in Austria between 1941 and 1955 were examined.
“Among them, 11,067 were identified as Ukrainians. This is 21% of the fallen Soviet soldiers whose origin has been clearly established. Given the share of Ukrainians in the total population of the USSR at that time (16.5%), this means that Ukrainians took a “disproportionately” large part in the liberation of Austria. Most of them died in 1945, that is, in the last months of the war. Their graves are scattered throughout the country,” the report says.
As Karner notes, among the Ukrainians buried in Austria are not only soldiers. About two-thirds of the graves belong to former death camp prisoners, prisoners of war, forced laborers or civilian internees.
The Austrian Interior Ministry, which is responsible for maintaining military and memorial graves, emphasized that the goal of the project was also to bring back to the fallen Ukrainians their names.
Karner also drew a parallel with modern times. According to him, the Russian attack on Ukraine and the associated military propaganda clearly show how important the work with memory is. After all, part of the Kremlin narrative is to diminish Ukraine’s historical contribution to the fight against Nazism.
“At the same time, it was Ukraine, together with Poland and Belarus, that suffered the greatest losses as a result of the German occupation and hostilities,” the Austrian historian concluded.
Recall that during World War II, the capital of Austria was liberated during the Vienna Offensive, which was carried out by the troops of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts with the support of the 1st Bulgarian Army. According to some estimates, more than 41,000 Red Army soldiers died and over 136,000 were wounded during the mission.
Russian propaganda has long kept quiet about the fact that Ukrainians, as part of Soviet troops, made a great contribution to the liberation of Europe from Nazism.
Source: Austria identifies 11,000 Ukrainians who died during country’s liberation in WW2
