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- Herausgeber: Edition Zeitpunkte
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Texel, early April 1945: German and Georgian soldiers were still serving together, seemingly in harmony, on the North Sea island, which had so far been spared from the war. The Georgians had enlisted as Eastern Legionnaires for service in the Wehrmacht in order to escape captivity. Now they were to go to the front. On the night of 6 April 1945, they revolted against their brothers in arms and killed hundreds of German soldiers. The uprising, which was joined by the Dutch resistance, engulfed the entire island. The Wehrmacht retaliated brutally. The island sank into a bloodbath that outlasted the end of the war in Europe. The book recounts the events on Texel in 1945 from the perspective of Georgian, Dutch and German participants. - With numerous photos and maps.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Inhaltsverzeichnis
Crucified Island
Kai Althoetmar
Crucified Island
April 6, 1945. The Georgian Uprising on Texel
Imprint:
Title: Crucified Island. April 6, 1945. The Georgian Uprising on Texel.
Year of publishing: 2025.
Publisher:
Edition Zeitpunkte
Kai Althoetmar
Am Heiden Weyher 2
53902 Bad Muenstereifel
Germany
e-mail: Althoetmar[at]aol.com
Text: © Kai Althoetmar.
Cover photo: lighthouse, De Cocksdorp, Texel. Photo: J.A. van der Vlis, CC BY-SA 3.0.
The research for this book was self-financed and without grants or benefits from third parties.
Today, sheep graze on the roof of the headquarters where the mutiny and murder began. Three sheep on a rampart that could be mistaken for a Holstein barrow, were it not for Texel, the dune paradise among Holland's North Sea islands. The site has already become a grave. On the night of 6 April 1945, when Nemesis, the daughter of Nyx, the ‘Night’, came to Texel from the realm of Greek mythology.
The farm is called ‘Texla’. The pointed roof of the slender main house is covered with red tiles. It's just a two-minute cycle ride from the centre of Den Burg. Pass the town cemetery and turn into Kogerstraat, leave Georgieweg to the right, and Texel's main town is a cow village. Grey concrete corners peek out from the green rampart, the remains of bunkers, fragments of ceilings and walls - the ‘Texla’ headquarters. The hill is fenced off, the tractor track around the meadow is muddy, it smells of slurry and the wind is icy cold. A small sign at the entrance to the path warns: No access. The writing is faded. At some point it must have become too much for the farmer. Always these questions about the past, the curious war tourists from Duitsland running across the pasture with their cameras and clambering up to the bunker - who wants that? And where is the piety? Hundreds dead, murdered in their sleep with daggers, like in ‘Macbeth’, but in Shakespeare's play, only the king was killed.
‘Texla’, former headquarters. Photo: Kai Althoetmar.
The Georgians had a name for the revolt: Operation ‘Day of Birth’. Most of them were about to die. In the fight against their ‘brothers in arms’. Together with the Germans, the Georgians formed the Georgian Infantry Battalion 822 ‘Queen Tamar’. The battalion was part of the Georgian Legion of the Eastern Legions. Around eight hundred Georgians, around four hundred Germans. Like all eastern legions, it was a mixed combat unit made up of German troops and Soviet prisoners of war and volunteers. Members of the Soviet minority peoples fought in the legions: Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Kalmyks, Tatars, North Caucasians, Turkmen, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Tajiks. Fifty-three battalions, 53,000 men, recruited in the prisoner-of-war camps. Hitler regarded them as valiant companions in the fight against Bolshevism.
Thursday, 5 April 1945: Georgians had been sharing quarters with the Germans in the barracks near the Texla bunker and in other positions for a few weeks. The Georgians wore Wehrmacht uniforms. And daggers so sharp that they shaved themselves with them. It was 1.00 am. A flare launched from Den Burg gave the signal to strike. Georgians rose up all over the island: at Texla headquarters, at the airfield, at the lighthouse, at the harbour, in the villages. The Georgians attacked the German guards and the sleeping German soldiers. They silently cut their throats and stabbed them with bayonets. If there was no other way, they shot them. It had been agreed exactly who was to kill whom. 408 German soldiers died. No prisoners were taken. Yevgeny Artemidze, a school teacher, then twenty-five, political commissar of the Georgian Legion and one of the leaders of the uprising, later said succinctly: ‘We occupied the headquarters. I shot thirteen Germans.’1
In the morning, the Dutch flag flew over Texla. Around two hundred Dutch joined the uprising. Fifty of them received rifles from the Georgians. The legionnaires now had plenty of weapons. Their commander Shalva Loladze gave a militant speech. He promised that the uprising would now break out throughout Holland. At the end he shouted: ‘Long live Holland! Long live the Soviet Union!’2 The insurgents destroyed the telephones at the post office in Den Burg. They failed to realise that the Wehrmacht had radio communications in Texla and at the battery bases. A German soldier who had survived the massacre in Texla sounded the alarm. The mutineers did not succeed in capturing the two heavily secured batteries in the north and south of the island. Each battery was manned by 250 Germans. No other battalions of legionnaires stationed along the coast joined the uprising.
Texel and the Netherlands.
