Parkfriedhof Eichhof

Cemetery description

The Eichhof Park Cemetery, spreading over an area of 39 ha, is the largest cemetery in Schleswig-Holstein. Located on the border of Kiel and the Kronshagen commune, the place is an Evangelical graveyard in which the war graves are taken care of by the city of Kiel. Extensive war graves cemetery sections Nos. 55, 59-61 can be found in the south-eastern part of the cemetery. The largest group of the deceased were civilian victims of air raids. Kiel, as the base for the German Navy, as a port city as well as the city of some key armaments industries was, during the war, a frequent target of air bombardments in which approximately 2,900 persons were killed (Germans and foreigners, including 200 Poles). Most were buried in this cemetery.
The next largest group of persons to have been buried in the cemetery were foreign citizens - victims of the Nordmark work education camp who were killed by the Gestapo, or died as a result of their exhausting work, disease or lack of medical care. Approximately 360 prisoners of this camp, including a large group of Polish citizens (at least 120), were interred in mass graves. After the war, their bodies were exhumed and the remains of the citizens from Western countries were moved to their countries of origin while those of Polish and Soviet citizens were moved to where their graves are at present.
Another group of victims that rests in the Eichhof Park Cemetery are women, men and children who died during their forced labour or as refugees after their labour was over.
In total, 390 identified citizens of Poland and an unknown number of unidentified Polish victims found their final resting place in the war graves of this cemetery. All the graves are marked by identical gravestones or crosses bearing the personal data of the deceased. Several names are inscribed upon collective memorial grave slabs. The state of preservation of the graves and the memorials in the cemetery is good.

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