Weisweiler Cemetery of Honor
The Ehrenfriedhof Weisweiler or Ehrenfriedhof Alte Burg is a military cemetery within the remains of the wall of Weisweiler Castle in Weisweiler , an eastern district of Eschweiler in the Aachen city region in North Rhine-Westphalia since 1972 . 290 war deaths from the Second World War lie here , including 33 nameless and naval deaths , fallen soldiers of Dutch origin, killed Soviet legionaries and volunteers who fought in the Wehrmacht and the Turk Talap Kalion in grave 21 of row 5, who lived in the Volga Tatar Battalion 627 fell on November 13, 1944 in neighboring Inden at the age of 37.
Another cemetery of honor in the city is the Hehlrath cemetery of honor .
history
Allied troops from the south-west reached Weisweiler via the so-called " Stolberg Corridor " , where the fighting raged from September to November 1944. Since there was soon no longer enough space in the village's cemetery for the burial of German fallen soldiers, a rectangular fruit tree meadow of around 5,000 m 2 within the ruins of Weisweiler Castle was owned by Haus Palant on October 29, 1944, during the war, as a war cemetery inaugurated in a specially agreed ceasefire with a military band and honorary formation and blessed both catholic and evangelical. They were buried there until November 25 of the same year, the day on which Weisweiler fell and the Wehrmacht withdrew. Birch crosses were the first tombstones.
After the end of World War II, some of the American soldiers buried there were transferred elsewhere. The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge took on the war cemetery in 1950 and replaced the birch wood crosses with stone crosses, which are still available in this form today. In 1957 the monument was erected - a granite slab with three warrior heads. It was created by the Aachen sculptor Erika Vonhoff .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Eschweiler-Weisweiler-Evangelischer Friedhof Alte (sic!) On: volksbund-nrw.de of December 11, 2010
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 49 '46.4 " N , 6 ° 19' 17.4" E