Bowing cross in Vidlitsa

June 27, 2019. Bowing cross in Vidlitsa

On June 27, 2019, in the Vidlitsa village was consecrated a Bowing cross on the site where was St. George Church. The memorial plaque says:

”To the heroes and victims of the Civil War
1919”

On April 21, 1919, the Reds under the leadership of the chairman of the volost bolshevik organization Mikhail Rosenstein, sent from Petrograd, took up defensive positions in the stone building of the village church.

As wrote later Jäger Major Gunnar von Hertzen: ”The attack on Vidlitsa began. The enemy retreated into the stone church and stubbornly defended himself. Since our mountain guns had no grenades, it was necessary to blow up the wall and clean up the church, getting inside. This slowed down our progress to some extent. We lost two men.”

Chief of Staff of the Olonets Volunteer Army, Jäger Captain Ragnar Nordström wrote later: ”When I arrived to Vidlitsa with the main force, there was a full battle. Those Reds who had survived, fortified in the stone church and stubbornly defended. We had to made several gunshots through the church door and also blow up one wall using a powerful blast of dynamite charge before the resistance ran out.”

On the other side of the Vidlitsa River locate a mass grave of Reds.