Kriegsgräberstätte Donsbrügger Heide - Donsbrüggen, Kleve, Germany
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PetjeOp
N 51° 47.560 E 006° 05.435
32U E 299365 N 5741983
Second World War rest on the war cemetery in Donsbrüggen.
Waymark Code: WM15H9Z
Location: Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Date Posted: 01/07/2022
Views: 4
2,381 dead from the Second World War rest on the war cemetery in Donsbrüggen. There are soldiers who died or who died in Kleve hospitals who came from all areas of the then German Reich, as well as victims of the bombing raid on Kleve on October 7, 1944, and foreign workers from various nations who perished while working on the so-called Siegfried Line.
The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge had already searched for scattered graves in this region in 1946. In 1948 the construction of the war cemetery began in the Donsbrügger Heide, the inauguration took place in 1950.
Design of the tomb
The dead rest in double rows, crisscrossed by green lawn paths and emphasized by individual birch, pine and juniper bushes.
The groups of crosses made of green Anröchter dolomite, which in their roughly hewn shape are reminiscent of medieval atonement crosses, characterize the wide area as a graveyard.
The focal point is a 6 m high crypt that rises above a comrade's grave with 40 unknown dead. A narrow gate leads into the crypt, narrow casemate windows in the top of the walls provide subdued light.
The masonry inside is made of green dolomite, the floor is paved with a brownish-red rolled layer of hard-fired stone. On the walls are the names of the dead on large Solnhofen stone slabs, under each window a double plaque, like an open stone book. The large half-relief of a crucifixion group made of Franconian shell limestone gives the room its own solemn dignity.
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