The forest war graves cemetery is located 1 km away from Meyerhöfen. It can be reached from Osnabruck by following road B 51 in the direction of Diepholz, and is the final resting place for 482 victims of both World Wars - soldiers, prisoners of war and forced labourers.
The victims’ graves are arranged in rows on both sides of the main alley (the left part - 17 rows, the right - 13). Their names are known and are provided on information boards. However, it is difficult to find a concrete grave as the numbers engraved upon the stone are illegible. The main alley runs up to the Monument of the Victims of War, which consists of concrete columns and bronze slabs with the names of approximately 200 victims.
Among the 482 victims of both World Wars, at least 124 Poles found their final resting place in the cemetery. 18 of them were soldiers of the Polish 1st Armoured Division who fell while liberating these territories or died in the first post-war months. However, the names of the deceased provided on the information boards lack the Polish diacritical marks, and the personal data about the civilian victims are distorted. Moreover, the burial site for the soldiers of the 1st Armoured Division is not marked in any way. The soldiers have their graves among those of civilian persons, and individually, these are not marked in any way, either.
Initially, the cemetery contained only between ten and twenty graves of forced labourers and Russian prisoners of war who died between 1942 and 1945. It was only in the 1950s and 1960s that the last remains of most of the victims were moved to this cemetery from the area of Hanover Osnabrück and Emsland.
The Bohmte commune is in possession of detailed information about the persons buried in the cemetery.
