Bardowick Friedhof

Cemetery description

The St Peter and St Paul’s Evangelical Cemetery (St. Peter und Paul Friedhof) in Bardowick houses a collective grave for persons of Polish origin, for so-called ‘Displaced Persons’ (‘DPs’), who died in the months following the end of World War II, most frequently as a result of the exhaustion and disease they fell ill with during their repression in German concentration camps or prisons or while doing hard forced labour.
After the liberation, the German residents of Bardowick near Lüneburg were resettled, and their houses were taken over by 1,500 Poles - former prisoners of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, forced labourers and Prisoners of War. Between 20 May 1945 and 29 March 1946, the city was inhabited by almost 5,000 people, out of whom 28 women, men, and children died. Their collective grave can be found in the central part of the cemetery, to the left of the chapel. The grave is marked by a stone obelisk bearing an inscription that says: ‘Here lie 28 Poles,’ and by a horizontally placed granite slab with the names of the deceased inscribed upon it, and which bears a memorial text in German that reads: ‘After the liberation on 15 April 1945, former Polish prisoners of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp were settled in the town of Bardowick. From 28 June 1945 until 12 February 1946, 28 women, men and children from this group of people died. They found their final resting place in this grave (‘Nach ihrer Befreiung am 15. April 1945 wurden im Flecken Bardowick ehemalige polnische Häftlinge des Konzentrationslagers Bergen-Belsen untergebracht. Vom 28. Juni 1945 bis zum 12. Februar 1946 starben 28 Frauen, Männer und Kinder dieser Gruppe. Sie fanden in dieser Grabanlage ihre letze Ruhe’).’

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