On the 27th of August 2011, a ceremony was held to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the opening of the German Soldiers' Cemetery in Gontscharnoye, a small town located between Sevastopol and Yalta on the Crimean peninsula. The cemetery was opened as part of a cooperative effort between the Ukrainian and German governments, to provide both a suitable memorial as well as collect up as many remains as possible from unmarked graves across the country where they laid unrecognised and in some cases entirely lost. Under the Soviet Union, organised war cemeteries, such as can be found all over Europe, were not possible. The Ukraine, a young country that gained independence in 1991, put the tract of land in Gontscharnoye--one of several--at the disposal of the German government, and it is maintained through the German War Graves Association (VDK -- Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V), largely by voluntary contributions.
I received notice of this memorial celebration in June from the VDK. My contact details were on file as a result of my enquiry about my uncles earlier in the year. The letter said that Leo Winkelbauer's name appeared on the list of soldiers who were remembered in the memorial books contained within the "House of Remembrance" at the cemetery, but no further information was given. I had received other advice, obtained through the local museum in Melitopol, saying that it was unlikely that any of the bodies buried after the battle of that town would have been moved, and neither were any of them marked with individual headstones.
Despite there being little reason to believe that Leo's remains were at the cemetery in Gontscharnoye, we decided to attend the ceremony.
On a glorious burnished late summer afternoon, some two hundred people gathered in a clearing in an oak forest, a sunny flank surrounded on three sides by oak forests covered hills, facing south towards the Black Sea. From our gathering place there was nothing to be seen except a panorama of forest going gold and purple in the gathering evening. A brass band from the Sevastopol navy stood to attention on a rise above the main memorial, and a colour guard lined the walk as the family members, local officials, embassy staff and other participants gathered to the sunset service.
As I walked up the path to where the benches had been put out for the attendees, I stopped to look at the rows of standing granite slabs that faced the path, each carved with the names of the soldiers who are now buried there--some 25,000 to date. There are groups of of them at several locations on the cemetery grounds, but these greeted the visitor as they made the climb to main memorial, and my eye fell to those on the left. Walking up, I followed the names alphabetically, the As, the Bs, and so on, searching through the alphabet, not bothering to look at the backs of slabs, where names were also inscribed, but just looking--generally--for the last part of the alphabet, the way you do when you pick up a dictionary and flip through the pages an inch at a time to find your part of the alphabet.
Then my eye fell onto the Ws, the sun shining on them and drawing me in. Weber, Weinfurtner, Wertheimer, Wilke, Winkel.....Winkelbauer. There was his name. Leonhard Winkelbauer, born 25.5.1923, a twin in fact, fallen in battle on the 21st of October twenty years later. I was able to find someone who knew about the planning of the cemetery, and the transferal of human remains to it over the past ten years. We consulted the memorial books in the House of Remembrance and discovered that his remains were taken from a mass grave in Melitopol, the occupants of which were documented, and moved to a section of the new cemetery for the unnamed. He was moved to Gontscharnoye in 2003, the same year his twin died.
The memorial service was conducted in German and Ukrainian, and included brief speeches by the director of the VDK, the German ambassador, the representative from the Austrian Black Cross (the VDK equivalent in Austria), members of the clergy, and the major of Sevastopol. A youth group made up of young people from Germany, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia made a presentation about one of the soldiers, reading his letters, telling of his life, a story as ordinary and poignant as the one described here. Every speaker had an interpreter by their side, so that each part of the ceremony could be equally appreciated by all.
A former German soldier, 91 years old, attended with with his children and grandchildren. A crowd gathered around him. Then the group stepped back to allow a Russian soldier, also over 90 and wearing his medals, and another comrade, this time a Ukrainian. They embraced and shook hands. The Russian saluted his new German friend, now wheelchair bound. One of the event helpers struggled to keep up as interpreter. "He says you are now my friend" explained the interpreter to the German. "To friendship" he replied.
By the time the service ended the sun had fallen behind the hills, leaving the gathering to descend the slope to the picnic tables which had been set up with traditional fare: chicken and pilaf prepared in a field kitchen, platters of locally grown produce on the table, and loaves of fresh bread, the local ham, and for each a small glass for a toast of vodka.
I let the others go ahead and remained a little longer on the meadow in the dusk. For the first time in 68 years, this boy--I cannot think of him as a man, as he was younger even than my own son is now--was close to his family. Rest in peace, Leo.
