Ostbevern war cemetery

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Three mourning women - sculpture above the mass grave (Theo Schäfer, 1976)

The Ostbevern war cemetery is a mass grave that was dug in Ostbevern shortly before the end of the Second World War .

Burial place

33 soldiers who perished in the fighting for Ostbevern on the night of April 3rd to 4th, 1945, rest in the mass grave in the old cemetery . 28 are named, five are unknown. Among them were two Hungarians and one Pole, the others were of German nationality. The stele is adorned with an iron cross and provided with the following epitaph :

"Here rest those who died on April 3rd and 4th, 1945 in Ostbevern"

Names

On April 3 and 4, 1945, they died near Ostbevern

Karl Baatz, * 1910 in Alten,
Karl Heinz Böhm, * 1927 in Löhne,
Hubert Bömer, * 1927 in Hembsen,
Helmut Dederichs, * 1925 in Zingsheim,
Eugen Dreier, * 1926 in Hagen,
Josef Drügen, * 1927 in Drensteinfurt,
Ludwig Fissenewert, * 1904 in Gütersloh,
Günther Grürmann, * 1926 in Elberfeld,
Wilhelm Knisspel, * 1916 in Flatow,
Janos Kovanczc, * 1920 in Csákvár,
Wilhelm Kühle, * 1902 in Remlingen,
Richard Lang, * 1920 in Watzenborn,
Stanislas Mysza, * 1906 in Gruszowiec,
Hubert Pollkläsner, * 1926 in Hövelhof,
Reinhold Riedel, * 1927 in Gelsenkirchen,
Helmut Schreiber, * 1928 in Dortmund,
Günther Siedenbiedel, * 1928 in Herne,
Hermann Steffes, * 1896 in Cologne,
Karl Stracke, * 1900 in Hagen,
Alexander Szelenyi, * 1923 in Veszprém,
Wilhelm von der Linden, * 1927 in Oberhausen,
Berhold Weber, * 1927 in Garstedt,
Alfred Wilhelm, * 1928 in Bochum,

as well as five unknown people.

Franz Berlage (born December 3, 1898 in Greven, † April 3, 1945 in Ostbevern), who was also killed in the fighting, was buried separately in the mass grave for only a few days. The body was exhumed on April 12 and, at the instigation of his widow, buried in a soldier's grave at the cemetery in Sassenberg on April 15 . In addition, two civilians were killed: Willi Höggemann and the apprentice Krimphoff from Beelen, who were also not buried in the mass grave.

prehistory

With the construction of the Münster-Handorf airfield and due to its proximity to Münster, a searchlight and gun position was also installed in the Handkenheide. When the Allied bomber groups bombed cities and airfields from 1943 onwards, the Telgte and Dorbaum flak positions, which served to secure the Handorf airfield, were replaced by a double anti-aircraft battery in Westbevern in January 1944, which were built on the edge of the village to the left and right of the road to Ostbevern , and in Ostbevern in the Handkenheide, added to the 6th and 7th / 324 flight battery. In Westbevern the eight cannons were extended to a large battery with a radio measuring device; There were two heavy anti-aircraft guns in Ostbevern. (These concrete plinths were supposed to be blown up after the war as part of the demilitarization , since at that time the barracks were used as refugee accommodation, only one was blown up, the other has been preserved to this day: 52 ° 3 ′ 6,3 ″  N , 7 ° 50 ′ 0 ″  O ). During the air raid on Münster on October 10, 1943, it was able to shoot down two Boeing B-17s over Ostbevern, near Rengering monastery . On September 12, 1944 was Handley Page Halifax of the Royal Air Force brought by the anti-aircraft position in Westbevern over the same area to crash. On February 19, 1945, a remote-controlled Fieseler Fi 103 hit the flooded relocations in the immediate vicinity of the elementary school and injured numerous school children through the broken glass from the shattered window panes.

The approaching front had already been announced in the Holy Week of 1945, when columns of prisoners and later troop transports blocked the streets of the village in a west-east direction. On the instructions of the local group leader, the Volkssturm erected an anti-tank barrier on the Bever Bridge, as enemy troops were expected from Telgte. Over Easter, various combat troops set up in Ostbevern several times, but they all finally moved on; after the capture of Münster, Ostbevern had become the line of retreat to the east. On March 31, 1945, the city of Greven was occupied by British and Canadian troops. On April 1st, Nienberge and Hiltrup also came into Allied hands. On the evening of April 2, 1945, Easter Monday, the Second World War ended for Münster with the entry of American and British armored troops and paratroopers. On the same day Ostbevern was handed over to the advancing US forces, the 36th Squadron of the 11th Cavalry Group of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment , even though the Volkssturm had been mobilized. Ostbevern was right at the interface between the British and American fronts, which closed the Ruhr basin . The Americans acted accordingly cautiously in Ostbevern, since the Allied allies were not to be shot at, and initially moved into the town, accompanied by infantry and tanks (771st Tank Destroyer Battalion). Many families had left the village as a precaution and settled in the surrounding peasantry. From Good Friday, German troop transports increasingly mingled with the many people who were on the run. There are guns on the road to Telgte and the train station. On Easter Monday, April 2, 1945, many German soldiers passed the village again. The first American tanks were seen around 7 p.m. On the same evening, local retirement master Heinrich Reckermann, accompanied by some citizens, handed over the village to the American armed forces, as the mayor Haase had disappeared. Despite the handover, fierce fighting between Germans and Americans did not fail to materialize. When the security troops retreated through the seam via the Münster-Handorf airfield and wanted to break through to the east, bloody fighting broke out the following day, which intensified particularly on the night of April 3rd, 1945.

Battle from April 3rd to 4th, 1945

During the night around 170 Hungarian soldiers billeted themselves in the elementary school; one of them was Sándor Kónya . After Ostbevern was taken, two trains of the German Infantry News Replacement and Training Company 211 under the command of Major Hermann Steffes approached the place via Handorf . It consisted of seven Hetzer tank destroyers , an ammunition carrier, a medical vehicle and two bucket trucks and infantrymen, mainly 17 to 18 year old recruits. Since the Emsbrücke had blown up in Telgte , people moved across the Ems in Westbevern and got into the Lehmbrock of Ostbevern unnoticed. Around 3 o'clock the advance of the remaining troops began with five tank destroyers, one truck and two command vehicles over the Grevener Damm towards the village. The Germans were first shot at the sports field, and another battle arose on the main road at the exit to Glandorf. Then the association tried to force a breakthrough north through the village farmers and Loburg . Especially at night 3:00 to 7:00 in the morning there was about to heavy fighting with American tanks type M24 Chaffee , M10 Wolverine and M36 Jackson . There was also street and house fighting between the church and the cemetery, in which Hungarian soldiers also intervened. The company failed above all due to the lack of fuel, so that many vehicles had to be abandoned. Eight vehicles were broken down on the American side. There are contradicting figures about the number of German casualties: In the After Action Reports of the National Archives, one report names 78 dead and 781 prisoners, another report names 130 dead and 509 prisoners. There is no information on the number of Americans killed or wounded because there are no records in the archives of casualties in connection with the Ostbevern battlefield. The US troops then withdrew to the south. It was originally planned that Ostbevern would now be bombed by the United States Air Force . However, Frieda Schwarz , who had lived as a lawyer in the USA for many years , succeeded in convincing the Americans that the attack was not a broken word and that it had nothing to do with it in Ostbevern. - Such reprisals were not uncommon, such as B. Sögel in Emsland shows. - Therefore, no retaliatory measures were taken. The "Frieda-Schwarz-Weg" was named in her honor in Ostbevern. The dead Americans were buried in the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial , as the American Battle Monuments Commission forbade the burial of their dead in "German soil". The dead in the fighting on the side of the Wehrmacht were then buried in a bomb crater in the old cemetery by students led by teacher Georg Kammer. In 1976 a war memorial was erected here, in which the war memorial of the First World War was also integrated. In 2003, a Polish war dead was reburied here from the new cemetery. In 2004 the facility was redesigned.

literature

  • Vicar Gr. Vorspohl in connection with d. Parish of St. Ambrosius Ostbevern (ed.): Wayside crosses and wayside shrines in the parish of St. Ambrosius Ostbevern. (Authors: Josef Vorspohl, Reinhard Drees, Norbert Reher) Krimphoff, Füchtorf 1978, ISBN 3-921787-03-9 .
  • Heinrich Eickholt: Ostbevern in the World War. Ostbevern 1993.
  • Franz Meyer: History of the community Ostbevern. Ostbevern 2000, ISBN 3-00-006943-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinrich Eickholt : Ostbevern in the World War. Ostbevern 1993, p. 191.
  2. ^ Franz Meyer: Geschichte der Gemeinde Ostbevern, Ostbevern 2000, p. 371.
  3. ^ Heinrich Eickholt: Ostbevern in the World War. Ostbevern 1993, p. 218.
  4. ↑ The unit could never be identified, but the G-2 Periodic Report of the headquarters of the 5th Armored Division on April 3, 1945 reported the capture of Hungary by an SS Panzer Division "Viking". Annex 2 to G-2 PR 246 IPW Report (Mehner archive). Literally it says: "[...] apparently a convalescent unit, 300 men who have left Hungary".
  5. ^ Franz Meyer: History of the community Ostbevern. Ostbevern 2000, pp. 369-370.
  6. ^ Heinrich Eickholt: Ostbevern in the World War. Ostbevern 1993, p. 259.

Coordinates: 52 ° 2 '25 "  N , 7 ° 50' 9.6"  E