Friedhof Westerhüsen

Cemetery description

The Magdeburg cemetery in the Westerhüsen district contains the graves of prisoners, forced labourers, and prisoners of war. The cemetery for foreign victims was established in 1941 in a separate fenced-off part of the Westerhüsen cemetery. By the end of the war, approximately 800 persons of different nationalities were buried here.
The first funeral, of a Polish lieutenant, Antoni Budny, took place on 4 August 1941. Soon, more and more funerals were carried out with each consecutive month, with the last ones taking place after the end of the war, in June 1945. According to the available data, 331 Russians, 138 Poles, 81 Ukrainians, 15 Serbs, 13 Czechs, 4 Belgians, 3 Latvians, 2 Chinese persons, and 2 Spaniards were buried here. In many cases, however, the personal data and the victims’ countries of origin remain unknown.
After the war, the cemetery fell under the direct management of the Soviet military administration. The first memorial sites were built and marked by typical Soviet symbols, and plaques with the victims’ names were placed on the graves. Also, exhumations of an unidentified number of Belgian, Danish, French, Dutch and Norwegian citizens were carried out. Therefore, the exact number of the victims buried here is impossible to establish. In 1995, the site was named the Cemetery of United Nations. In 2005, a memorial plaque was put up with an inscription saying: ‘This cemetery is the final resting place for 766 World War II victims of 11 different nationalities.’ This is followed by Willi Brandt’s quote: ‘Peace is not everything, but without peace, everything is nothing.’
Since 2013, a commemorative statue in the form of a metal book with the names of the victims and their countries of origin has been standing next to the graves.

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