War Cemetery Wesuwe

The Wesuwe camp cemetery was established in the autumn of 1941 on the site of a former Reich Labour Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst) camp. According to the grave registers from the 1950s, 98 Soviet prisoners of war whose names are known are buried in individual graves at the war cemetery, along with between 2,000 and 4,000 Soviet prisoners of war in three mass graves.

Only 332 have been identified by name to date. According to records from the Italian Graves Service, 17 Italian military internees are also said to have been buried at the Wesuwe camp cemetery. Based on the current state of research, it is estimated that at least 695 Soviet prisoners of war are buried on the camp cemetery, which was situated approximately 1 km from the camp. The first documented burial took place on 16 September 1941.

The victims of the Nazi dictatorship buried in these war cemeteries are granted the right to eternal rest under the ‘Act on the Preservation of Graves and Victims of War and Tyranny’. The current layout of the cemeteries was largely implemented between 1951 and 1974. The artistic memorial design, in the form of monuments and stelae, adorns the cemetery without reflecting specific grave locations.