Thursday, May 09, 2013

Bender (Tighina) Moldova - War Cemetery


 Being in eastern Europe, you'd expect a war memorial and cemetery of this size to be from World War II.  This one is unusual in that it's not.  It's from the Ottoman-Russian wars of the 18th and 19th centuries.  These wars are one of the root causes of Moldova's current frozen conflict.  They caused a lot of settling of  certain ethnic groups on lands formerly occupied by other ethnic groups... you get the picture.  Anyway, beautiful place, but hard to get an unbiased history of.  Lots of nationalities, from as far away as Sweden, buried here.









2 comments:

Hollie said...

Gorgeous!

Meg Welch said...

It really is. Too bad it's still kind of off limits to most people.