Pfaffenheck war cemetery
The Pfaffenheck war cemetery is a cemetery for victims of the Second World War who died between March 14 and 17, 1945 in the vicinity of Pfaffenheck . Despite the geographical proximity to Pfaffenheck, the cemetery is today in the district of the city of Boppard .
The facility is located on the east side of Bundesstraße 327 ( Hunsrückhöhenstraße ) near the village of Pfaffenheck, a district of the municipality of Nörtershausen . According to the Graves Act of 1952 for the preservation of the graves of victims of war and tyranny , the site is in the care of the community. The cemetery in its present form was created in 1957 from the mass grave for almost 100, known by name, fallen German soldiers of a battalion of the 6th SS Mountain Division "North" , which was laid out immediately after the fighting . When war dead from neighboring cemeteries and field graves were reburied and reburied in the following years, the number of graves grew to 236. The large number of grave sites with the reference to Unknown Soldier and War Dead reminds us that (according to oral tradition from contemporary witnesses) many dead are robbed and their identifiers were lost. Some are also said to have been executed by court courts.
prehistory
In mid-March 1945 Pfaffenheck was the focus of a last front on the Vorderhunsrück, where units of the German Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS were supposed to stop the infantry and tanks of the 90th US Infantry Division on their way from the Lower Moselle to the Middle Rhine. From Thursday, March 14th to Saturday, March 16th, fierce battles lasted, some of which degenerated into close-quarters and house-to-house combat, described in American military literature as the Battle of Pfaffenheck , and losses of almost 300 "casualties" (dead and wounded ) number (information from the US Army Library, USAG Heidelberg). The recovery of the German dead in Pfaffenheck and the surrounding area began on Sunday, March 17th, but they were only allowed to be buried in a mass grave days after members of the US Army had determined their rank, troop unit, etc. The rescue - ordered by a US officer - was carried out by a group of adolescents and old men from Nörtershausen.
- A 15-year-old boy from this group remembers in 1994: “ We drove the dead in a handcart to the pit next to the road. There they lay wrapped in tarpaulin. The next day we saw that they were missing their boots, the breast pockets of their uniform jackets were slit, and some had their fingers cut off ”.
A pit next to the Hunsrückhöhenstrasse was dug as a grave, in which the corpses lay in several layers on top of each other. An earth wall with a birch trunk cross and a Wehrmacht steel helmet marked this place as a military cemetery until the early 1950s .
German prisoners of war had to rescue the fallen US soldiers. They were transported by truck to a cemetery in Luxembourg.
The burial site since 1957
In 1956/57 a "cemetery of honor" was created in place of the mass grave, on which the traditional image of graves lying side by side is shown in several rows. Simple, low stone crosses, as are typical for military cemeteries, stand at regular intervals. Metal name tags in the shape of a cross, each symbolizing a grave, are embedded in the floor. In the entrance area of the facility, the names of the men from Pfaffenheck who died and went missing in World War II are listed on a wall in memory. On the same wall, the names of the dead lying here are listed and information is given on the number of nameless war dead who were later laid in bed. It cannot be overlooked that most of the dead named were members of the 6th SS Mountain Division "North" , who " died in heavy fighting in Pfaffenheck in March 1945 ". For the inauguration of the cemetery, with large participation of the local population, and on later anniversaries of the "battle" and on the commemoration days in November, survivors of the unit, representatives of the SS aid community for members of the former Waffen SS and the traditional association always appeared . This demonstration - and also a more critical, public assessment of the National Socialist SS, especially in the 1980s and 1990s - led to protests. T. required police presence at commemorations.
Sources and literature
- Willy Wagner, war at home. The final phase of the 2nd World War in the Mosel-Rhine-Hunsrück area , Simmern 1995, ISBN 3-9804416-1-X
- Maximilian Langen, War and Occupation in Nörtershausen and Pfaffenheck in March 1945 , Moselkiesel Volume 1, Kobern-Gondorf 1998, ISBN 3-9806059-0-6
- Franz Schreiber, Fight under the Northern Lights. History of the 6th SS Mountain Division "North" , Osnabrück 1969
- Mary H. Williams, US Army in World War II. Chronology 1941–1945 , Washington DC 1960
- Rhein-Zeitung Koblenz, eyewitness reports about the end of the 2nd World War in the region . Contributions 1985, 1995, archive of the Mittelrhein-Verlag Koblenz
- Interviews with contemporary witnesses in 1994/95 on the occasion of the fiftieth recurrence of the events of 1945
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 14 ′ 7.8 " N , 7 ° 30 ′ 48.6" E