Bergfriedhof Auerbach

Cemetery description

A collective grave containing the remains of Polish and Greek citizens is located outside the cemetery’s fence, right next to the entrance from Kirchweg Street (the eastern part of the cemetery). The grave is surrounded by a hedgerow and is marked by a stone cross as well as a plaque with the names of some of the victims and a plaque that provides the following inscription about the deceased (the information is not full):
‘When one inmate died, rather than carrying him off to the cemetery, another inmate would dump him in the nearest toilet. He would say - ‘tomorrow or the day after tomorrow another one will die, and then we will take both of them away’.
Former Greek forced labourer.
Athens 1990
Most of those buried here are Greeks who died of exhaustion, lack of food and clothing, lack of medical care, harsh working conditions and inhumane treatment on the part of the German guards. The victims came from the group of 130 Greeks who had been captured in a round-up in Athens and transported to Germany. Between August 1944 until the end of the war, they had to work in Engineer Hans Heymann’s company. This armaments plant was forcibly arranged in the present-day area of the Höchstädter Tal granite processing plant. The forced labourers were accommodated in one of the halls in the Auerbach railway station’.
The research conducted in 2022 revealed that 10 men from Poland are buried in this cemetery. When alive, these were prisoners of various concentration camps, but at the time of their death, they were inmates of the Natzweiler concentration camp. All had been deported from Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising.

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