I have been researching the events related to the Texel uprising for 30 years.

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78 years have passed since the end of World War II, and time has covered a lot of facts.

As a result of the research on the archival materials, it was confirmed that the German troops first captured and then created a legion from the captives, which for 19 months, together with the German army units, protected the interests of the Wehrmacht.

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The Legion of Captured Soviet Warriors was deployed to the territory of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, in particular on the island of Texel. The Legion was Georgian. They began preparations for the rebellion against the fascists a few months before the end of the war. The rebellion began on April 6. It was a real life-and-death struggle. Unequal forces confronted each other. The Germans were three times more than the Georgians, and the German war techniques were also incomparably strong. In the fight against fascism, Georgians showed many examples of combat courage and dedication. 513 Georgian soldiers were killed in the clash. Grateful, the Dutch handed them over to the land of Texel, and every year, during the celebration of the date of the uprising, pay tribute to the warriors buried in the cemetery of Shalva Loladze's family, who have gained freedom for the population of Texel at the cost of their own lives.

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It should be noted that Armenian, Ossetian, Abkhazian, and Georgian-Jewish soldiers participated in the rebellion together with Georgian warriors.

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It took me decades and the support of famous Dutch scholars to gather all the materials. I personally met the surviving members of the Texel Rebellion: E. Artemidze, G. Baindurashvili, P. Gakharia; I met the representatives of the families of the deceased. It was important to study the archives preserved both in Georgia and Holland and eventually I collected the information that became the basis of the historical material presented at the memorial erected at the Shalva Loladze Brothers Cemetery. The result of our labour is that today we can safely say that forgotten surnames no longer exist!

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It is also fundamental that I identified the names and surnames of 228 warriors who survived the Texel Uprising. I found objects depicting the events of the uprising, group and individual photos, different types of unique written, documentary

 

Remembrance of Texel's events is a warning against the new risks of fascism in the modern world an we, Georgians are still in the vanguard of this battle.