Authorities in the Siberian region of Omsk had to patch up a recently unveiled World War II memorial after it turned out that a list of perished World War II veterans inscribed on its granite included the names of seven who are still alive, a news report said.
The seven names on the monument in the Luzinsky village of the Omsk region have been covered up with what looked like gray-colored paste, leaving visible stripes in the list of names on the granite slabs, local SuperOmsk news portal reported Tuesday, posting a photo of the patched-up memorial. Some of the names that have been covered up could still be discerned, the report said.
A relative of one of the surviving veterans, 92-year-old Ivan Iskorenko, whose name appeared on the list, said that the error — and the attempt to fix it — should not be judged too harshly, SuperOmsk reported.
“Naturally, it was not intentional,” the relative, Gennady Iskorenko, was quoted as saying. “Everybody is human, everybody makes mistakes. Makes no sense to rebuild everything now. It costs a lot of money, In any event, they corrected the mistake as much as they could, and attention should not be fixed on it.”
Many memorials to World War II soldiers in the Omsk region's villages have fallen into disrepair, the report added, saying that local veterans have appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to help get the monuments restored.
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