Potelych is a village in the western Ukrainian oblast (administrative district) of Lviv with around 2,500 inhabitants. The village is part of the municipality of Rawa-Ruska. The war cemetery there, inaugurated on June 6, 1998, is located on the main street of Potelych.
Description of the cemetery
The Potelytsch war cemetery - for the dead of the Second World War - was established in 1998 by the German War Graves Commission on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany. Access to the three-hectare cemetery is through a simple entrance building. From there, a paved path leads up to a central square with an approximately five-metre high granite cross - the central mark of the war cemetery. Granite steles at the edge of the burial blocks document the names and dates of life of the war dead buried here in alphabetical order. There is no mention of ranks, military units or traditional associations. The cemetery was officially opened on June 6, 1998 with great participation from the community.
History
During the Second World War, Potelych first belonged to the Soviet Union, from 1941 to the (German) Generalgouvernement and from 1945 back to the Soviet Union - today to independent Ukraine. The German Wehrmacht laid out a cemetery for around 400 dead soldiers on a slope near Potelych. The German-Ukrainian War Graves Agreement, which came into effect in 1997, forms the legal basis for the establishment of today's Potelych war cemetery. The regional administration of Zhowkwa made a total of three hectares of land available, including the original cemetery. The Volksbund began transferring German war dead to Potelych as early as 1993. By 2007, more than 10,000 war dead had been recovered from graves in the west of Ukraine and buried here. All war dead from the area around Lviv are buried at the war cemetery.
Special feature
Potelych is home to one of the largest German war cemeteries in Ukraine. Once all the reburial work has been completed, almost 30,000 German war dead will have found their final resting place there.
