The Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg, spanning the area of 391 hectares, is the largest necropolis in Europe. The eastern part of this contains an international war graves burial section for foreign citizens. In the area of 15,000 m2 there are over 3,000 graves of victims of war and Nazism, of different nationalities. Among them are prisoners of the Neuengamme and Fuhlsbüttel concentration camps, forced labourers and their children, prisoners of war, court victims, members of the resistance movement, victims of air bombardments, refugees, and so-called ‘displaced persons’, i.e. foreign persons who, after the war, stayed in Germany waiting for transport to their home countries or for further emigration.
Burials in this part of the cemetery took place already during World War II. As of the late 1940s, the remains of foreign victims were moved here from other Hamburg municipal cemeteries. Most of them were buried in collective graves.
This part also contains the Polish War Graves Cemetery, one of the largest of this kind to be found in German municipal cemeteries. Burial sections Nos. BP73 and BP74 hold the graves of 1,256 Polish citizens. Among them were prisoners of the Neuengamme concentration camp (417 persons), prisoners of war (34 persons), civilian forced labourers (563 persons) as well as those who died after the war (24), those whose graves were crossed out of the cemetery registry book in 1962 (20), and unidentified Polish citizens - probably victims of air bombardments (12).
In 1949, thanks to the Polish Consulate, about 300 graves of Polish citizens were moved here from all over the city. Between 1950 and 1951, the Union of Polish Refugees in Germany funded stone (concrete) crosses with Polish crowned eagles to be placed on their graves. In 1973, the crosses were replaced with gravestones. Ten of those crosses stand by a two-metre-high granite cross and a memorial plaque to complement the memorial. These were placed at the site in 1995 by the Council for the Protection of Memory of Combat and Martyrdom.
Most Polish citizens buried in the cemetery are not commemorated in name. Only 300 names, out of 1,058 names of identified Polish citizens, are inscribed upon the gravestones.
The present-day (2020) technical states of the gravestones and other elements of the memorial are far from satisfactory. The main reason is the huge time span between the renovation and reconstruction works that took place in the early 1970s and the present day.
Cemetery address: Hamburg, Hamburg
Ohlsdorf, Fuhlsbüttler Str. 745
22337 Hamburg
GPS: 53.620149,10.035403
Cemetery administration: Beratungszentrum Friedhof Ohlsdorf,
www.friedhof-hamburg.de/die-friedhoefe/ohlsdorf/,
Fuhlsbüttler Str. 756, 22337 Hamburg,
+49 40 - 593 88 - 0
