War cemetery Blankenheim-Alendorf
The war cemetery Blankenheim-Alendorf is a war cemetery in Alendorf , a district of the municipality of Blankenheim in the Euskirchen district in North Rhine-Westphalia .
location
The war cemetery is located around 350 meters northeast of the village center on a hill. There is the cemetery of the old church to the west of it . The area is surrounded by a wall made of uncut and not layered field stones . The ensemble can be reached by a spur road from Alendorfstrasse, which runs southwards.
Background and story
At the end of the Second World War , massive fighting broke out in the area of the then still independent places of the community of Blankenheim. They did not end until American soldiers took the place on March 7th and 8th, 1945. Several thousand soldiers died and civilians perished in what was then Schleiden County . They were buried in the local cemeteries. At the initiative of Pastor Carl Werner, the residents of Alendorf and Waldorf built a memorial for the victims of the war next to the old church. It was inaugurated on All Saints' Day in 1948 as a war memorial . Annually on Kirchweihfest on 20 October which kept church from a memorial service.
In 1966, on the initiative of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge , workers expanded the memorial into a war cemetery. The parish made the property available. The inauguration took place on September 11th, 1966 by the Alendorfer pastor Johannes Bertram in the presence of the Aachen district president Hubert Schmitt-Degenhardt .
construction
The site can be entered from the southwest through a wrought iron gate. At the entrance there is a stele with a list of names and the location of all war dead. A total of 146 dead were buried in the war cemetery. They come mainly from Ahrdorf , Ahrhütte , Blankenheimerdorf , Dollendorf , Lommersdorf , Nettersheim and Ripsdorf . Six of the victims could not be identified; two are from the Soviet Union and two more were civilians. The youngest victim was 17 years old. Each grave is marked with a cross made of Palatinate sandstone on which the known dates of birth and death were incorporated. 37 private gravestones for war victims from Alendorf and Waldorf were included in the design. They come from the original warrior memorial and were placed as a border around the stone crosses of the other victims.
In the southern area there is a memorial stone that forms the center of the war cemetery. There you can read: “Remember the victims / the great wars / 1914–1918 1939–1945”. The logo of the Volksbund Deutscher Kriegsgräberfürsorge is carved in the stone below. Among them the German poet Matthias Claudius is quoted: “Man lives and exists only for a short time, / and all the world passes with its glory. / There is only one forever and at all ends, / and we are in his hands ”.
Web links
- War cemetery Blankenheim-Alendorf , website of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, accessed on April 21, 2019.
Coordinates: 50 ° 22 ′ 17 " N , 6 ° 38 ′ 24.6" E