Friedhof Halberstadt

Cemetery description

The municipal cemetery in Halberstadt is the final resting place for almost 1,000 victims of both World Wars. It contains the graves of soldiers who fell in World War I, civilian victims of bombings in World War II, and graves of foreign citizens - inmates of various prisons and concentration camps, as well as forced labourers and their children.
Approximately 150 victims were Polish citizens, and their graves are located in several burial sections. In the burial section called the Cemetery of Concentration Camp Victims, 164 prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp are buried. They had been imprisoned in the Langenstein-Zwieberge sub-camp located next to Helberstadt. Most died in an American military hospital just after their liberation, in April 1945. The names of 15 Polish prisoners of this camp have been identified.
About 60 Polish civilian war victims, including women, men and children, deported to the Third Reich during World War II, are interred in the burial section called the ‘Special Cemetery’ or the ‘Cemetery of Victims of Terror’. There are also the graves of German civilians, who were mostly killed in air raids by the Allied Forces. Also, 121 prisoners of the JVA Wolfenbüttel prison are buried in the municipal cemetery in Halberstadt. During the war, they were sent to forced labour in the ‘Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk’ forced labour camp in Halberstadt. The largest group of victims were Poles - 71, followed by Italians - 42, and 8 persons of an unidentified nationality. In place of the former mass grave there was erected, in 2019, a dark granite obelisk with an inscription in Polish, German and Italian, which says: ‘In memory of the 121 victims murdered by National Socialists in Halberstadt in 1945.’ The monument has the victims’ names inscribed upon both sides. At its back there is a memorial devoted to those whose identity has not yet been confirmed.
Initially, victims of the camp were buried secretly in a mass grave in 1945. In autumn 1953, the bodies were exhumed, cremated in Quedlinburg, and the ashes of the 121 persons were buried in two urns. It was only in 2015 that their identity and places of origin were determined due to the research conducted in the cemetery. All the war graves burial sections and memorials in the Halberstadt cemetery are well maintained (state from 2020).

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