Zentralfriedhof

Cemetery description

In the Central Cemetery in Fulda (Zentralfriedhof), there are numerous war grave sites as well as individual war graves of victims from Poland, the USSR, Italy, Lithuania and Latvia, scattered all over the cemetery. Sections Nos. 4, 10, 20 and 23 of the western part of the cemetery house war graves and collective memorials of the dead victims. These are three stone crosses and memorial tablets with the names of some of the Polish citizens killed during air bombardments in 1944 and 1945. The tablets were funded by those who, after the war, found shelter in displaced persons camps. Most of the Polish people resting in the cemetery were forced labourers who, being employed in the local industrial plants, were most at risk of getting killed in air raids. 27 December 1944 is remembered as a tragic day for the Polish labourers (this fact is mentioned on one of the tablets) when 95 of them were killed in an air bombardment. Their remains were buried in this cemetery.
In section No. 4, the largest part of the war graves cemetery, there is a red sandstone monument with a cross and an inscription saying: ‘Here lie foreign war victims who died between the years 1939 and 1945. Their home countries were Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Italy.’
The Fulda town hall is in possession of the data stating the number of Polish citizens buried in the Fulda central cemetery to be 150. To this day, however, only 50 graves have survived, which are marked by stone crosses. Only a few of them mention the names of the dead victims.
According to the archive list revealed during the 2018 research into the cemetery, Zentralfriedhof is the final resting place for over 220 Polish citizens, most of whom died during World War II. The remainder were Poles who died after the war, died in the displaced persons camps, or died as Polish children born after the war. The war grave sites and the headstones have been preserved in a good state (data from 2018) but they fail to commemorate all the Polish citizens buried in the cemetery.

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