Among those who were the first to be buried (in 1943) in this cemetery were victims of the Reiherhorst-Wöbbelin sub-camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp. On 8 May 1945, the American troops that had captured the city of Schwerin gave the order to organise a solemn funeral for 74 prisoners, who were buried in individual graves. Local residents of the city were also obliged to take part in the ceremony.
In July 1945, after the establishment of the Russian occupation zone in the surrounding area, the Red Army soldiers and their family members began to be buried in the cemetery. The burials ceased in 1967. It is assumed that altogether 1,063 Soviet citizens were buried during that time. As of the late 1940s, the cemetery also served as a burial site for Germans who had been persecuted by the Nazis as well as their family members.
The number of the deceased buried in this cemetery is estimated at 1,504, 755 of whom were war victims buried in 723 individual graves and in 4 mass graves. A certain number of them were Polish, yet there are no documents that would make it possible to determine their names.
Between 2011 and 2013, the whole cemetery was restored. In 2016, Dagmar and Peter Kary launched a campaign aiming at identifying the camp numbers and the names of 22 concentration camp prisoners. The married couple conducted an intensive search of the memorial site in Wöbbelin, due to which they managed to establish the names of at least some of the concentration camp prisoners.
