War Cemetery Aschendorfermoor

On 1 February 1946, 172 victims of the so-called ‘Herold massacre’ which took place from 12 to 19 April 1945 and 23 victims of the British air raid on 19 April 1945 were exhumed. The bodies were buried in the south-east corner of the former camp. The Aschendorfermoor war cemetery was remodelled several times over the years.

In 1951, a square memorial stone was erected with the inscription: ‘To the memory of the dead resting here’. Oswald Langerhans was responsible for the landscaping. In 1965, a second memorial stone, surrounded by a roundel, was erected in the centre of the war cemetery. The inscription reads: ‘In honour of the victims of National Socialist tyranny who rest here’. In 1985, a Luxembourg association erected another stone in memory of Luxembourg's forced conscripts in the Wehrmacht who were sentenced by German courts and imprisoned in the Aschendorfermoor II prison camp.

The Nazi victims of the ‘Emsland camps’ buried in the war cemeteries have a perpetual right of rest under the ‘Law on the Preservation of Graves and Victims of War and Tyranny’. The current design of the cemeteries was significantly influenced between 1951 and 1974. The current memorial design of the Aschendorfermoor war cemetery no longer shows any specific grave locations.