Odesa Proposes Memorial Complex for Fallen Ukrainian Soldiers with Interfaith Chapel

Representatives of public organizations that unite the families of the fallen soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and religious denominations discussed the possibility of creating a memorial complex in memory of the fallen on the territory of the Western Cemetery with the construction of an interfaith chapel.

According to an Intent correspondent, the participants decided to appeal to the Odesa City Council to finance the creation of the memorial from the city budget and to have the memorial and chapel taken on the balance sheet of the utility companies.

According to public figures, the project of the memorial should be determined on the basis of an open competition where architects would submit their vision of what it should look like, and at the same time they plan to organize public discussions, the result of which should encourage the city council to participate more actively in the process. At the moment, as explained by representatives of civil society organizations, the issue of creating the memorial is being discussed with representatives of the city council only informally, and the Odesa City Council proposes not to hold a competition but to use the services of an architect proposed by the municipality.

The meeting on April 21 was attended by representatives of the Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant branches of Christianity. Buddhists, Greek Catholics, and Muslims were not represented, but the initiators of the memorial say that the idea of the interfaith chapel is to allow it to be used for prayers by adherents of all faiths.

They also noted that this does not include representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, as there is already a church on the territory of the Western Cemetery that is subordinate to a branch of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

As Oksana Dovgopolova, curator of the "Past, Future, Art" platform for memory culture, who has studied the process of memorialization in Europe, told Intent, there have been attempts to create memorials in Ukraine, but so far these attempts have not reached a logical conclusion.

"Ukraine has experience in developing projects, but no experience in successfully implementing such projects. There are competitions of varying degrees of seriousness, but there is no successful experience in creating memorial cemeteries yet. So far, four competitions have been held in Ukraine in this area, but all projects needed to be finalized," she said.

The existing examples in Europe were created according to the principles that were developed 100 years ago, while each new war generates its own language of memory.

"There are a lot of negotiations about the color of monuments now. For example, they should be white, not black, which is associated with the Soviet tradition. So that we can distinguish between military and civilian graves. Now we can see where a soldier is buried only by the flags on the graves," noted Oksana Dovgopolova.

Also during the discussion, it became known that civil society organizations do not know the exact number of military graves at the cemetery, so after the land is allocated, they plan to allocate a place at the cemetery for military graves.

Кирило Бойко