Westfriedhof

Cemetery description

The Westfriedhof cemetery in Paderborn is the final resting place for 487 victims of World War II. Of these, 115 or perhaps even 135, were Polish citizens. Most of them were forced labourers and prisoners of war who lived and worked in Paderborn, where they died as a result of hunger, disease, exhaustion or in air raids of the city.
Most Polish victims are buried in the smaller burial section M, located in the northern part of the cemetery, where citizens of the USSR are also buried. On the edge of this section, stands a stone memorial plaque with an inscription in German that reads: ‘The cemetery of Polish and Russian war victims’ (‘Kriegsgräberanlage für polnische und russische Kriegstote’). The 42 granite tablets, arranged in seven rows, have the names of Polish men and women (2-3 names on each tablet) inscribed upon them.
Polish citizens are also buried in the centrally located burial site for victims of World War I and World War II, also known as the burial site for victims of air bombardments. Several dozen gravestones commemorate, above all, German victims of the Allied air raids of industrial plants in Paderborn’s surroundings and transport hubs in the city itself. Among the German names are some that sound foreign, which implies that foreign citizens are also buried here, most probably forced labourers who died side by side with the Germans who worked in the same plants. The sound of those names suggests that their owners were of Polish, Ukrainian, Russian or Italian origin.

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