Armistice on the Eastern Front

[Witt]

Hello,

The newest Great War photo I have received. I keep telling myself to stick to WW2 photos but here we are. The subject matter of this one was too interesting to not pick up. The photo postcard shows Russian and German soldiers meeting for the armistice in the east on 17 December 1917. The armistice is read aloud by a German interpreter at the Schrschara. Struggled to find this location initially but it should be the 300km Shchara River that flows through Belarus. Comparing this with the frontline at the time, I am guessing this may have been around the Pinsk/ Brest-Litovsk region.
Neat to see both sides together at the end and all of the veteran fighters that survived. Some of the Russian may have gone on to the revolution and died, as some of the Germans moved back to the western front and ultimately fell. The back of the postcard was completely penciled in but most of it has faded so badly that very few words can be made out as anything remotely readable.



Ben

[Kohima]

It looks a bit more like Schtschara to me, though I don’t imagine that would make any difference to your research.
A very rare find and a pivotal moment in history.. I wonder how different things might have been now if it never happened..
Nice find, Ben.
All the best,
Rob

[Witt]

Thank you for the correction. I see that it would be the Schtschara in German, the ‘t’ looked like an ‘r’ to me since it’s worn down similar to ‘waffenstillstand’ looks almost like ‘-stilistand’. Unfortunate that the writing on the reverse has faded too much to read.


The only other example I’ve been able to find with a light search, the Blavatnik Archive has this postcard from the same time although far less populated by soldiers.