Marzahn Parkfriedhof

Cemetery description

At the time of National Socialism and World War II, thousands of victims of the Nazi regime and the war were buried in the Marzahn Municipal Cemetery in Berlin. Since the 1950s, numerous memorial sites commemorating different groups of the dead have been established here.


Memorial sites commemorating victims of World War II

The monument - a hand raised to make an oath, bearing the inscription: ‘3,330 victims of bombardment terror are warning you - the living’ - commemorates victims of air bombardments. The victims were both German civilians and citizens of other nationalities brought to Berlin as forced labourers. From the same period of time comes the porphyry Memorial Stone of Victims of Fascism with the ODF symbol (victims of Fascism), and an inscription saying: ‘46 people died so that we could live.’ The stone commemorates 4 women and 42 men executed, between 1939 and 1942, in the Plötzensee prison, whose ashes were interred here. In total, almost 3,000 persons were executed in the Plötzensee prison, many of whom came from the territories occupied by the Germans.
The sculpture - a stele commemorating victims of forced labour who died in Marzahn.
The monument has the following inscription: ‘In memory of men and women forced labourers and their children from numerous countries of Europe, 1939-1945; thousands of them died in Berlin and its surroundings. Many of them were buried in this cemetery.’ In Marzahn itself there were 27 concentration camps that housed forced labourers from the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Belgium, Holland, and other European countries. The greatest number of forced labourers was employed by the German Reich Railway (Deutsche Reichsbahn), which had 7 camps in Marzahn-Hellersdorf.
The latest research into the cemetery has confirmed that at least 1,400 victims of forced labour, including 100 children, are interred in the burial sections located further into the centre of the cemetery. Among the victims are more than 370 Polish citizens. Their graves are marked by stone plaques with their names inscribed upon them.
One of the burial sections contains a memorial plaque and the graves of 20 Polish girls and young women who came from Łódź and who were deported to do forced labour in the AEG plant. They died on 4 September 1943 in an air bombardment, under the rubble in the basement of the building where they had sought shelter. At the scene of their death at 16 Grenz Street (Grenzstraße) in Berlin, another memorial plaque was placed on the initiative of Bolesław Pajączkowski, a former forced labourer from Łódź.
The cemetery also has a memorial commemorating German Sinti and Roma first imprisoned in the Marzahn camp, and then killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Moreover, there is a Soviet war cemetery, the graves of World War I soldiers, and a memorial commemorating the victims of Stalinism.

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