Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Elsewhere 10/19/2010


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

2 comments:

The Aberdonian said...

Just seen the thing about Glasnevin. There is a war memorial in the corner of the cemetery. From what I can gather from the CWGC website, it is policy at Glasnevin not to have UK military grave markers - I am guessing this is because of Glasnevin being a nationalist/republican pantheon. Grave markers in cemeteries apart from Glasnevin are of course allowed.

I did some research a few years ago of where the British military casaulties of the Easter Rising ended up. Some did end up in Glasnevin and Mount Jerome municipal cemeteries and a pile ended up in Dean's Grange in Dun Laorigh.

However most ended up buried in Grangegorman, the old British military cemetery (still used for veterans) in north Dublin. Others are buried in the grounds of Kilmainham Hospital and five are buried in a mass grave in the grounds of what is now the North East health board hq.

After the south went its own way, a number of British military graves on Irish government property were exhumed and they were reburied at Grangegorman. These included reburials from those buried in Dublin Castle Yard (these included calvary officers killed in the rising), George V military hospital (now St Bridgin's), Trinity College grounds and various barracks grounds.

From what I can gather Grangegorman also contains the gravestones from Cork military cemetery - I guess they face vandalisation there.

Things are more positive than the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Many graves lie unmarked or even been recycled. I was in Novi Sad earlier this month in northern Serbia and visited the old garrison cemetery. Lets just say Austrian graves are not well kept. I do not think the grass had been cut for maybe a decade or so. It was like savannah.

In Ljubijana the graves had been smashed up. Recently the burial ground has been replaced with black marble monument errected by the Austrian CWGC/British Legion outfit the OSK whom I have contact with. They help look after all war dead in Austria and help in dealing with the war dead of Austria-Hungary outside Austria's borders.

They have a thankless task trying to errect memorials/errect graves for the war dead of a now defunct country.

www.osk.at

O'Neill said...

"They have a thankless task trying to errect memorials/errect graves for the war dead of a now defunct country."

The saddest thing I've seen in that region are the old Jewish graveyards. Complete and utter desecration in almost all cases.