The Cemetery of the Soviet POWs

It was located in the vicinity of the so-called Russenlager, that is the camp established in 1941 to accommodate Soviet POWs. They made the most numerous and the harshest treated group of POWs. There were about 40 thousand soldiers of the Red Army buried in mass graves in this cemetery, including also Poles who had fought in the ranks of the Soviet Army.

The dead were buried here beginning with 1942, yet it has not been possible to unambiguously establish the date when the burials were stopped in this place. The dead were buried in anonymous graves, their bodies arranged in layers, which we can know from the partial exhumation carried out after the end of the War. According to the orders issued by the German military authorities, burials were to be arranged in a way that did not draw anybody’s attention. Therefore, entering the area of the cemetery was forbidden.

The present appearance of the cemetery comes from 1964. It was then that the Monument of Martyrdom of Prisoners-of-War was erected, which was designed to commemorate all the POWs who died in the Lamsdorf camps during World War 2. The monument consists of two monumental blocks which bear sculptures symbolizing the fallen. At the beginning of the 1990s, there was a cross put up in the vicinity of it. The Cemetery of the Soviet POWs is the last object on the Route of Remembrance.