Ukrainian Chapel, Hullmuir

To the south of Lockerbie stands a few prefabricated huts, the remains of the Hallmuir Prisoner of War Camp. Included among them is the Hallmuir Ukrainian Chapel, built by Ukrainian prisoners who occupied the camp until May, 1947. The Cold War and tensions between the USSR and Great Britain likely complicated their return to their own land.

The Ukrainians in question fought with 14th Galicia Division of the Waffen-SS, though under under German command. They might have joined the SS because of their hatred of Communist Russia, or, for having met the SS’s racial criteria, they might have believed all that guff about ethnic superiority. Alternatively, they may have had little choice but to enlist, Ukraine being controlled by Nazi Germany, with its insatiable appetite for manpower and soldiery. Either way, they were members of a particularly evil military organisation belonging to an especially wicked human empire.

Quite what men who had fought for such a cause felt when they found themselves in southern Scotland, I do not know. From that godless legion, men built a chapel, where the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was worshipped and addressed. Whatever their culpability, their crimes, their longings and aspirations, they came to this chapel, a place of hope and peace among the barrack blocks and the memories. Despite the dubious furnishings, I hope they encountered the Son of David, through whom grace and mercy is offered to the very worst of us.

Like this chapel, ugly and dull without but bright and cheerful within, God takes broken, ruined people and offers them inner hope, inner peace and inner healing. 

Lord of all gentleness, Lord of all calm,
whose voice is contentment, whose presence is balm:
Be there at our sleeping, and give us, we pray,
your peace in our hearts, Lord, at the end of the day.

-Jan Struther, 1931

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