06.05.2024

11:53:00

FILIPOVIĆ: MAUTHAUSEN - SYMBOL OF SUFFERING OF SERBIAN PEOPLE

BANJA LUKA, MAY 6 /SRNA/ - Head of the Representation of Republika Srpska in Austria Mladen Filipović has told SRNA today that the Mauthausen concentration camp was one of the largest Nazi camps and execution grounds, and is a symbol of the suffering of the Serbian people in the First and Second World Wars.

The international commemorative gathering marking the 79th anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp was held yesterday in the organization of the Austrian Mauthausen Committee, and Filipović pointed out that the memorial ceremony has great international significance, reminding that 21,000 Serbs were killed in this camp. "It is important to mention the memorial chapel of the Holy Serbian New Martyrs at the cemetery of the former camp in Mauthausen, which was built with the support of the institutions of Serbia and Republika Srpska, and consecrated in June of last year by His Holiness Serbian Patriarch Porfirije," Filipović said. Filipović reminded that the memorial chapel was built in memory of Serbian officers, soldiers and civilians who were captured in the fall of 1914 and taken from Serbia and its surroundings to the Mauthausen prison camp near Linz, through which about 40,000 Serbs, Italians, Russians and other nations passed by the year 1918. "The idea of building a memorial chapel is more than 100 years old. One of the interned Serbian officers in his letters, which he wrote in the period from 1914 to 1918, expressed hope that after the Great War, a memorial - chapel would be built on the site of the camp in order to preserve the memory of the sacrifice made by the Serbian inmates," Filipović said. He stated that the implementation of this project began in the summer of 2014 with the involvement of Archpriest Stavrophor Dragan Mićić from Linz and his parishioners, and with the great support of the President of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik. Mauthausen - one of the most notorious Nazi camps was active in the First and Second World Wars. It consisted of the main camp and 49 side camps, and by 1945, about 200,000 people were deported to the Mauthausen camp and its side camps. More than half of them were killed or died as a result of forced labor and starvation.