Posted on 08.04.2012 and completed on 01.09.2013
Until to receive this postcard, I didn't know anything about the Texel island, the largest and most populated of the Frisian Islands in the Wadden Sea (an UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2009, as "the largest unbroken system of intertidal sand and mud flats in the world, with natural processes undisturbed throughout most of the area"), and also the westernmost of this archipelago, which extends to Denmark. Well, here took place at the end of WWII the Georgian Uprising (Opstand der Georgiërs), later called Europe's last battlefield, because virtually ended on May 20, 1945, so after Germany's general surrender (May 8).
Only few know that, despite the racial politics of the Third Reich, the German army had in composition units formed from troops without Aryan blood, such as Indians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Turkmens, Tatars, Arabs etc. Among these units was the Georgian Legion, formed from émigrés living in Western Europe and Soviet prisoners of war who were enlisted, while facing certain death from starvation, disease, forced labor and brutality in POW camps. The 822nd battalion of this legion, consisted of 800 Georgians and 400 Germans, was posted to Subsection Texel on February 1945. Preparations started in late March for a move of several companies to the Dutch mainland to oppose Allied advances led to the rebellion of which I mentioned previously.
Shortly after midnight on the night of 5-6 April 1945, expecting an Allied landing soon, the Georgians rose up and took control of nearly the entire island. All the 400 Germans were killed while sleeping in the quarters they shared with Georgians, who used knives and bayonets. Members of the Dutch resistance participated and assisted the Georgians, who failed however to capture the naval batteries on the north and the south of the island.
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