Thread by @mossrobeson__

#Thread of monuments & memorials in southeastern Austria honoring the Ukrainian ("Galician") Division of the Waffen-SS, which apparently played a significant role in staving off the Red Army there in the last few weeks of WW2, effectively securing the area for British occupation.

Feldbach is today a small town of ~13,000 people. A plaque memorializing the "Galician Division" (a.k.a. the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS) was unveiled in the parish memorial church(?—"Gedenkkirche der Stadtpfarre") in 1954. So was a memorial stone outside it in 1981.

Here is a video clip of veterans of the "Galician Division," many if not most of whom were members of the Association of Former Ukrainian Combatants of Great Britain, visiting the above-mentioned Waffen-SS memorials in Feldbach, Austria in May 1985—40 years after WW2 ended.

In 2016, the Ukrainian Waffen-SS memorials finally became a matter of controversy for the small town and were temporarily covered until a compromise was reached in early 2018. They remained in place, but the symbols of the "Galician Division" were removed. kleinezeitung.at/steiermark/sue…

As of August 2018, according to an image capture by Google Street View, the stone memorial on Feldbach's "church square" honoring the "Galician Division" was behind a barricade—someone want to translate the message? (I'm guessing the image is of the local military cemetery.)

Another Ukrainian Waffen-SS memorial is in Feldbach's military cemetery, where it is located in a corner and appears to be the largest memorial. As noted by a local blogger in the summer of 2018, someone had recently decorated it with a ribbon of Ukraine's national colors.

Veterans of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS visited the Ukrainian memorial in Feldbach's military cemetery in May 1985. Not sure if this was a one time affair to mark the 40th anniversary of their fellow Waffen-SS soldiers' deaths, but I suspect so.

Bad Gleichenberg, a municipality of ~2,000 people, is located roughly 6 miles south of Feldbach. It also has a memorial to the "Galician Division" in its local cemetery (pictured here in 2014: uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0…), which Ukrainian Waffen-SS veterans also visited in May 1985.

Just west of Bad Gleichenberg and technically within the municipality is a community of ~800 people called Trautmannsdorf. Its cemetery apparently has a special section for Ukrainian Waffen-SS veterans, circled in red. The red square—the Jewish cemetery (friedhofsfonds.org/detail-view/61).

Once again here is a video clip of "Galician Division" veterans visiting the Ukrainian section of the Trautmannsdorf cemetery in 1985, which contains a tall monument dedicated to the fallen Waffen-SS soldiers. (Some pictures of it today can be found here: uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D1…)

In Gnas, another municipality about 3 miles west of Trautmannsdorf, home to ~6000 people today (up from <2000 in recent decades), is yet another memorial dedicated to the Ukrainian Waffen-SS. On the left is the original memorial in Gnas for those who ostensibly "died for Ukraine"

Those are all the "Galician Division" memorials noted on 🇺🇦 Wikipedia, but the footage I found of Ukrainian Waffen-SS veterans visiting southeastern Austria revealed there to be more. So far I've located only one, in a small community of <500 people, ~4 miles southwest of Gnas...

The parish church in Bierbaum am Auersbach apparently still has a rather large Ukrainian Waffen-SS memorial right outside, as seen in this footage from May 1985. (It's just barely visible in this photo from 2012 I found on Wikipedia, behind the tree: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kirc…)

There are a few more Ukrainian Waffen-SS memorials in this part of southeastern Austria, but you get the idea. If anyone wants access to the rest of the footage I found from 1985, let me know.

To be sure, these memorials are not explicitly honoring the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS per se, but the "1st Division of the Ukrainian National Army," which essentially just existed on paper. I think this paragraph from a Wikipedia article provides a decent explainer

(That being said, the monument in front of the church in Bierbaum am Auersbach actually says "1943-1945," as opposed to "April-May 1945" like the plaque inside the church in Feldbach.)