Recently we were in Georgia for the introductory film and the VR film for our museum. A look behind the scenes. Part 5: looking for Nellie.
Mako Tatunashvili takes the turnoff to Tserovani, a village where there is no visible war destruction, but where everyone is affected by war. After all, only refugees live here. They were expelled from their village of Akhalgori in 2008 in what has come to be known as the Russo-Georgian war.
But it was the Second World War that led Mako to contact me. Mako’s grandfather ended up with a battalion of Georgians in German service on the Dutch island of Texel, where in April 1945 the Georgians turned against the Germans and started an uprising.
The uprising failed, after which the surviving Georgians had to hide for weeks on an island which was combed millimeter by millimeter by the Germans. Georgians who were found were shot. Help from islanders was also punishable by death.
“Grandpa told me that they hid in the water under a bridge, with only their noses above the water, so that they could breathe and the German dogs couldn’t smell them. They were covered in leeches. Grandpa had a lot of scratches and scars, because they had to remove them with a knife.”
Granddad survived and confessed to his wife upon returning to Georgia that he had fathered a child with a Dutch woman. “His wife, my grandmother, wasn’t even that angry. But her sister was and she tore up the photo of the Dutch woman and burned it.”
Grandpa tried to hook up with Anna at first, Mako says. But Anna got married. And through Anna he met Nellie. “That’s what her name should be, yes, Nellie. Can you help find her?”
Know more about Nellie or Anna?
Write or call us (info@sovjet-ereveld.nl; 06-14393859).
