Cemetery of honor for the dead of the Cap Arcona and Thielbek disasters
The cemetery of honor for the dead of the Cap Arcona and Thielbek disaster near Haffkrug -Gronenberg-Neukoppel (municipality of Scharbeutz in the Ostholstein district in Schleswig-Holstein ) is a cemetery of honor where 1,128 victims of the sinking of the Cap Arcona and Thielbek on May 3, 1945 are buried.
location
The cemetery is hidden, hardly recognizable from the outside, in a small wooded area at exit 15 ( Eutin ) of the A1 from Lübeck towards Neustadt in Holstein. Starting from the Haffkrug pier over Bahnhofstrasse and Haffkrug train station, the cemetery parking lot is located immediately after motorway exit 15 (Eutin). Two side entrances lead from the parking lot to the cemetery. The facility, located on a gently sloping terrain, is laid out in a west-east direction and runs in a triangular shape towards a high cross.
The dead
From the middle of April 1945, the prisoners from the concentration camps Neuengamme , Stutthof near Danzig and the Auschwitz subcamp Fürstengrube were brought to the Baltic Sea region on death marches and in freight wagons. One of the death marches was the Fürstengrube death march . The 9,000 inmates of the Neuengamme concentration camp were taken on foot and in freight wagons to the Vorwerker industrial port in Lübeck on April 20, 1945 and from there to the ships in the Neustädter Bucht with confiscated feeder ships. In the Neustädter Bucht, the prisoners were locked up in the ships Cap Arcona (4,200 prisoners from Neuengamme concentration camp), Athens (2,000 prisoners) and Thielbek (2,800 prisoners from Stutthoff concentration camp) and in smaller boats (1,600 prisoners). Prisoners from the Thielbek were able to save themselves on land before the bombing, but were shot there by the SS and Volkssturm. In the days after the bombing of May 3, 1945, the bodies drifted along the beaches of the Bay of Lübeck from Grube to Poel Island, including in Sierksdorf, Haffkrug and Scharbeutz, and were buried in several places.
The International Tracing Service (ITS) in Arolsen has documents on the graves of those who have been rescued and stores the victims' effects.
The cemetery
The cemetery was created in 1950 as a collective cemetery for the dead of the Cap Arcona disaster in the area of the Bay of Lübeck. It lies in a beech forest with an unobstructed view of the place where the ships were bombed. The Scharbeutz Cemetery of Honor (also Haffkrug-Neukoppel Memorial Cemetery) is the largest of the Cap Arcona cemeteries with 1,128 of around 8,000 victims. The cemetery became an enclave with traffic routes around it. The beginning of the 1960s, the highway was tangent A one built. Later the entrances and exits from the Eutin junction to the B 76 federal highway . It is still uncertain whether the freight railway's route to the Fehmarnbelt crossing will further isolate the cemetery area.
Burial grounds
layout
The entrance in the north leads to the main path on the eastern edge. In the middle of the complex, a memorial stone on the edge of the path reminds of the events of the sinking of the Cap Arcona and Thielbek. From the main path, two paths lead through the rows of graves (five rows in the south, four rows in the middle, three rows in the north) to the tall, simple cross made of wooden beams in the west of the complex. The cross stands at the western end of the facility on the edge of the lawn where the central memorial stone for the victims is located.
Extra beds
In 1954 some 100 victims were reburied from the Sierksdorf cemetery for the victims of the Cap Arcona disaster, which was located next to the Hotel Seehof, in Haffkrug.
Monument to Polish Forced Laborers
In the south of the complex, at the end of the main path, there is a memorial with an inscription in Polish in memory of Polish forced laborers . It was originally located in the Eichhof park cemetery in Kronshagen and was transferred to the cemetery of honor in the 1960s in connection with a mass grave being exhumed there.
Cross of the cemetery of honor with memorial stone
Text on the plaque
Text on the memorial stone
Memorial for Polish forced laborers in the cemetery of honor
Sign pointing to the cemetery of honor
new sign to the Ehrenfriedhof
More cemeteries along the Bay of Lübeck
See cemeteries with victims of the Cap Arcona disaster around the Bay of Lübeck
Footnotes
- ↑ Cap Arcona Memorial Sponsorship Association: Cap Arcona May 3, 1945. Memorials, museums, cemeteries. Grevesmühlen approx. 2012 (leaflet).
- ↑ Cap Arcona Memorial Sponsorship Association: Cap Arcona May 3, 1945. Memorials, museums, cemeteries. Grevesmühlen approx. 2012 (leaflet).
- ↑ Thousands of prisoners died in the Lübeck Bay (at its-arolsen.org). ( Memento from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Kay Dohnke: 5 minutes, 50 meters, 50 years. Memory of the Cap Arcona after half a century. In: taz. Die Tageszeitung, Hamburg edition of May 3, 1995. ( Memento of the original of December 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ The Cap Arcona disaster (on Denktag). ( Memento from March 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Haffkrug-Neukoppel cemetery of honor: Invitation to the “Future needs memories” campaign. In: Der Reporter, November 21, 2018, p. 27.
- ^ Community of Sierksdorf, The Mayor, Amt Ostholstein-Mitte (ed.): Sierksdorfer Wegsteine are memorials for 7,000 concentration camp victims of the Cap-Arcona disaster of May 3, 1945. Leaflet from approx. 2012
Web links
- Memorial sites for the victims of Cap Arcona
- (pl) Haffkrug Cap Arcona - Polski Nekropolie (Polish war cemetery Haffkrug)
Coordinates: 54 ° 3 ' N , 10 ° 44' E