Rovaniemi Norvajärvi German War Cemetery

The Rovaniemi Norvajärvi German War Cemetery is located 18 km north of Rovaniemi , Finland . It was inaugurated on August 31, 1963. 2,530 fallen German soldiers of the Second World War rest here .

location

Entrance tower with vestibule

From the car park on the autostraße, a footpath through the forest leads to the cemetery area in 10 minutes. The dead rest in a tomb building that looks like a church. The 16,000 square meter cemetery is located on a wooded headland on Lake Norvasee. A tall steel cross was erected on the lakeshore.

The dead

The dead fell in Lapland (Finland) during World War II . The entrance from the parking lot is marked by a stone plaque that reads German Military Cemetery 1939–1944 . The winter war (Soviet-Finnish war) lasted from 1939 to 1940. German military advisers also worked in secret for the Finnish troops. The German soldiers who died in the process are also buried in this cemetery. The Continuation War in Finland was waged by the German Wehrmacht with the allied Finland from 1941 against the Soviet Union and ended in a positional war in the north until 1944. After Finland terminated the alliance, the war was then waged in the Lapland War from 1944 to 1945 between Finland and the Wehrmacht . The fallen were brought here from graves in the provinces of Lapland and Oulu . One of the original cemeteries built during the war. was at Cemetery 4 in Rovaniemi. Those who died in the Soviet-occupied part of Finland could not be transferred to the Rovaniemi cemetery.

Crypt hall

Inscriptions on a grave slab: rank, first name, surname, date of birth, date of death

The crypt is a hall with a tower and consists of red granite blocks. In the tower-like anteroom there is a bronze Pietà : mother and son of Ursula Querner . At the Pietà, flowers and wreaths are laid in memory by the visitors. In the vestibule there is a register of the dead, in which the tombs in the main hall are indicated. The sarcophagi are buried in the crypt of the main hall. The sarcophagi are protected by shared slabs of light-colored shell limestone. The names, rank, date of birth and death of the fallen are carved in continuous writing. The hall has large glass windows with colored ornaments. It is bathed in twilight in daylight. It is open from May 1st to September 30th of each year, depending on the weather.