DPR: June 22 at the Saur-Mogila Memorial

22.06.2017, DPR.

76 years ago, our Fatherland faced a challenge that humanity had never faced before. Our ancestors defended their right to liberty and saved the planet from the Nazi darkness at the expense of millions of lives. Today is the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow.

Since the very morning, the Vostok Brigade’s servicemen and veterans, relatives and friends gathered near the Saur-Mogila Memorial. A small requiem rally, a solemn award ceremony for a heavy injured soldier, and a concert took place. The guests listened to poems and songs from the war years. Everyone was impressed by the performance of the Donbass-Arena band formed by the grandfathers, who are famous in Donetsk. They played music in the streets of the city even during the hottest day of the Civil war in Donbass, under heavy shelling.

One can feel at once that the Saur-Mogila Memorial is a sacred place, and that there is an exceptional atmosphere here. Here especially, one feels very keenly the link between the generations, the unity between the soldiers fallen in the battle with fascism. One can find a small cemetery at the foot of the burial mound. The modern defenders of Donbass are buried here next to the heroes of the Great Patriotic War.

A chapel is being constructed near the cemetery. The construction workers have promised to finish all the works by the Day of Donbass Liberation on September 8, 2017.

Flowers were laid to the monument with names of the Red Army soldiers fallen in the battle for Saur-Mogila in summer of 1943. Then the column went to the downed stela on the top of the burial mound, honoring the memory of the Vostok Brigade’s soldiers who died on the hill in 2014. Father Boris held a church service.

On another side of the burial mound, a memorial stone was installed at the place where the soldiers with callsigns Filin and Tolsty died. On July 8, 2014, an enemy mortar shell landed right into the trench; these were the first casualties at the Saur-Mogila. The relatives of Filin and Tolsty came to this place today…

Our fallen comrades are like sentries. While we remember them, and we believe in the unity of the dead and the living; they stand in the ranks together with us.

Source: “Essence of Time” unit in Donbass

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