Neuer Friedhof

Cemetery description

The New Cemetery (Neuer Friedhof) in Parchim contains numerous war graves and memorials commemorating those who were killed in World War II. Polish citizens can be found here - buried in a collective burial site for forced labourers, prisoners of war, German soldiers, and in a grave-site of the victims of the death march from the Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück concentration camps. The cemetery’s records also mention one grave of a Polish prisoner of war.
However, not all the war graves have survived until today. Despite being mentioned in the cemetery’s registry book, between ten and twenty war graves cannot be found because this section of the cemetery was redeveloped after the war.
Section No. 17 contains a collective grave marked by symbolic stone crosses. There are also single graves with the victims’ names inscribed upon them. The names of the dead can also be found on brass memorial plaques that surround this section of the cemetery on one side.
In section No. 8 there is a collective war grave containing the remains of 271 persons - victims of World War II who originated from a number of different countries, including Poland. Here, a stone wall was erected along which individual gravestones lie on the ground. However, the inscriptions engraved upon them are now illegible.
Burial section P contains a large burial site for prisoners murdered in the Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. It is marked by a monument in the middle, with an inscription saying: ‘To ensure peace for you, who are dead, is the duty of the living.’ The granite slabs lying both on the left and the right of the monument bear some data about the identified victims inscribed upon them. Section No. 11 contains Russian war graves, while section No. 35 holds the graves of German soldiers. Right outside the cemetery, on the edge of section P, there is yet another burial site for those who died either during World War I or World War II.

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