Soldatenfriedhof Stalag VIB Mühlberg

Cemetery description

The Neuburxdorf Military Cemetery (also known as the ‘POW Cemetery’) is a separate part of the cemetery that is located in the Neuburxdorf district of the town of Bad Liebenwerda that is also not far from the town of Mühlberg/Elbe. Initially, this was a cemetery designated for holding the remains of approximately 3,000 soldiers and officers - POWs of the nearby Stalag IV-B Mühlberg who died or were killed between 1939 and 1945. The vast majority of the victims were Soviet prisoners of war (2368), who were buried in mass graves. The 630 single graves hold the last remains of prisoners of war from several anti-Hitler allied countries - the French (347), the English (50), Italians (72), Poles (48), Yugoslavs (43), Americans (29), the Dutch (23), Danes (9), Belgians (5), Slovaks (2), 1 individual from Greece and 1 individual from India.
After the war, the remains of the Soviet POWs were transferred to the Honorary Cemetery in Elsterwerda, while the remains of the POWs from Western Europe were moved to their countries of origin or to other places.
The first prisoners of Stalag IV-B were Polish soldiers of the 1939 September Campaign in Poland and it was them who became the first victims buried in this cemetery. In total, during World War II, 53 Poles, including 49 POWs and 4 civilians who died during the first months after the war, found their final resting place here. In 2004, to this burial site were transferred 44 graves of Polish men and women (mainly the Home Army soldiers and insurgents from the Warsaw Uprising) who died in the Stalag 304 Zeithain camp/lazaret (field hospital) and were initially buried in the camp cemetery in the Italian POWs burial site.
The main form of commemorating those buried in this cemetery is a monument in the shape of a cross that was designed by a former French POW (Georges Bacincoust), behind which is a semi-circle wall that bears several bronze plaques. The main plaque has the following text inscribed upon it in German, French, Italian, English and Russian: ‘This cemetery is the final resting place of soldiers and civilians who perished in POW camp Mühlberg STALAG IV B between 1939 and 1945. IN RESPECTFUL MEMORY.’ The names of the victims of different nationalities, including 46 persons from Poland, are inscribed upon 11 plaques. The final plaque provides the information about the number of the exhumed remains of the deceased that came from different countries.
On the right side of the POW Cemetery one can find a memorial devoted to the Polish POWs - soldiers of the Polish Home Army. The small wall bears the names of the victims and an inscription in Polish and German that reads as follows: ‘In memory of the Poles resting in this cemetery - POWs of Stalag IVB Mühlberg, soldiers of the Home Army that fought in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, who died in the military hospital in Zeithain in the years 1944/45.’
Nearby, there is a memorial to the Yugoslav POWs, whose remains were moved to this site from Zeithain, and an individual memorial to Medical Doctor Major Wilhelm Borkowski, whose memorial was funded by his relatives. The cemetery is very well maintained and the state of the memorials is also very good.

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