They perished with Serbia in their hearts. We have no right to forget: Velky Meder prison camp victims honored

Photo: Printscreen/RTS

(The memorial plaque reads, in Slovak and in Serbian: "5,153 Serb martyrs and soldiers, who lost their lives in captivity in Velky Meder camp, are buried in this place - 1914-1918 - GLORY ETERNAL! - VELKY MEDER, 2003 - THE SERB PEOPLE.")

Recommended

A delegation of the Government of Serbia, the Ministry of Defense and associations that preserve the memory of those who perished in Serbia's liberation wars laid wreaths and flowers at a memorial located in one of the largest sites of suffering of Serbs in the First World War, the Veliki Medjer (Velky Meder) prisoner camp in Slovakia.

The commemorative ceremony was also attended by cadets of the Military Academy and students of the Criminal Police Academy.

During the war, Austria-Hungary held imprisoned Serb civilians and Serbian and Montenegrin prisoners of war in this camp. During the four years of war, tens of thousands of Serbs passed through the camp.

5,135 died there.

"My grandfather Djuro and his two brothers from Gracanica, a village next to Andrijevica (in Montenegro), were forced to walk to Zelenika in 1916, after the famous Battle of Mojkovac, to then be taken by train to Sarajevo, and further by qvcattle train and ships to Velky Meder," says Vladimir Laban, a descendant of one of the camp's prisoners.

Veteran of the 63rd Parachute Brigade Nebojsa Kerkez says that such tribute trips are organized in order not to forget those people who lost their lives in this place.

"Those who were far from their villages, their families, their homesteads, their homes, but they had Serbia in their hearts and they died with Serbia in their hearts. We, have no right to forget them," stressed Kerkez.

(Telegraf.rs)