Sovjet Ereveld in Leusden daubed with slogans again
Paint and slogans against "commies" and refugees have been daubed on the obelisk and memorial wall at the Sovjet Ereveld in Leusden, where 865 Second World War victims are buried.
The Sovjet Ereveld, a Soviet war cemetery in Leusden, has been defaced again. The obelisk and the memorial wall were smeared with paint, the foundation behind the cemetery said on its website.
The text on the wall is in red paint, the text on the obelisk in black. The slogans include "Not against Russians, but against commies", "Dutch government = commies" and "F*** refugees".
The cemetery was also defaced in July. Then, about 150 graves were smeared with paint as well as the wall and the obelisk. The paint soaked into the porous stone, and removing it took great effort.
"Tragic and sad. We are in consultation with the authorities involved," said Remco Reiding, director of Stichting Sovjet Ereveld. "We hope a solution will be found that prevents it happening again."
The 865 people buried at the cemetery include Red Army soldiers, prisoners of war, forced labourers and deserters who died in different ways in Europe. Some died of hunger, illness or exhaustion; others were shot. "We'll carry on working to make sure these war victims are remembered respectfully and their stories are told," Reiding said.
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Sovjet Ereveld
A Soviet war cemetery in Leusden, in the Dutch province of Utrecht, where Soviet soldiers who died in the Netherlands during the Second World War are buried. The site has a memorial with an obelisk and a memorial wall. An ereveld is a Dutch term for a war cemetery that is kept as a protected memorial place, and the Sovjet Ereveld is one of several such sites in the Netherlands that commemorate the dead of the war.