celebration
Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Porfirije will inaugurate the new Serbian Orthodox memorial chapel at 9:30 am on Saturday during his visit to Austria at the Mauthausen military cemetery.
06.07.2023 06.00
Online since today, 6:00 am
As the Viennese Serbian Orthodox Bishop Andrej (Cilerdzic) said at a press conference in Vienna on Wednesday, on the one hand the commemoration of the Serb victims in Mauthausen must be maintained, on the other hand it is also a sign of reconciliation, “that something like this must never happen again and violence and war must have no place in the future”. He is delighted that, in addition to the Catholic cemetery chapel, there is now an “even more beautiful Orthodox chapel”, as Cilerdzic said with a wink .
The laying of the cornerstone of the “Memorial Chapel of the Holy New Martyrs of Serbia” at the military cemetery in Mauthausen took place on April 3, 2016. The celebration was presided over by Archbishop Andrej (Cilerdzic). Also present were Bishop Manfred Scheuer and the then Governor of Upper Austria, Josef Pühringer. In 2020, construction on the outside was completed. Frescoes were then painted inside and the iconostasis installed. The church was basically completed for about a year.
Already in the prison camp of the First World War
In Mauthausen – long before the Nazi concentration camp – construction of a prisoner of war camp had already begun at the start of World War I, in September 1914. As a result, 40,000 men – Serbs, Russians and Italians – were temporarily imprisoned in the wide area along the railway line. Thousands of them died during a typhus epidemic in January 1915, including up to 8,000 Serbian soldiers. A book of the dead with the names of the victims is available at the memorial.
However, the most prominent “victim” was the Roman Catholic Bishop of Linz Rudolph Hittmair, who visited the prisoners in 1915, became infected and also died of typhus. A total of 10,845 World War I and 5,212 World War II soldiers are buried in the military cemetery.
Fresco for Catholic Bishop
Bishop Cilerdzic specifically emphasized Bishop Hittmair at the press conference. A fresco in the chapel is dedicated to him – unusual for Orthodox churches – showing the bishop as a “Good Samaritan” who takes care of prisoners.
The consecration of the new chapel will take place during a Eucharistic celebration presided over by the Patriarch and more than ten Orthodox bishops. In addition, numerous Serbian Orthodox clerics and believers are expected from Austria, but also from Switzerland, Italy and Malta. Politicians also promised to come.