- "The graves are a reminder to us to use all our strength for peace!"
Germany
Ahlen, Westfriedhof
Total Occupation: 241 fatalities
Total Occupation: 241 fatalities
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Ahlen
Germany
Open all year round
War cemeteries in Ahlen A total of 492 war dead from the Second World War rest on four war cemeteries in Ahlen. Most of them have been laid to rest in the East Cemetery (99 German war dead in a separate cemetery, 127 Soviet war dead and two unknown war dead) and here in the West Cemetery (241 German war dead and one Hungarian war dead). There are still 5 war graves at the cemetery in the Dolberg district (one German, one Russian, one Polish and 2 unknown war dead) and 17 war graves at the Catholic cemetery in the Vorhelm district (13 German and 4 Russian war dead). Among the war dead at the Ahlen cemeteries are also forced and foreign laborers. They came from Russia, Poland, Croatia, the Ukraine, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. The Dutch, Belgian and Italian war dead were exhumed after the war and repatriated. Ahlen was one of the first German towns to be bombed. However, these were not yet targeted attacks. They were mostly individual Allied aircraft returning from an attack further east and dropping the rest of their deadly cargo indiscriminately on the return flight. The first bombs fell on the miners' colony of the "Westfalen" colliery on the night of June 20, 1940. Some of the houses were in flames. At the time, this first night of bombing was not taken seriously by the colony's inhabitants as a harbinger of a gloomy future. They believed it was a one-off event and thought that only the air defense had not been paying attention. Hundreds of onlookers, even from Münster, made a pilgrimage to the colony to take a look at the bomb funnels with goose bumps on their necks. Nobody could have guessed that 44 more bombing raids would follow until the end of the war, killing a total of 295 people - men, women and children. Thursday, March 23, 1944, became the fateful day for many of the city's citizens. At around 11 o'clock in the morning, British planes attacked the colliery and the surrounding residential areas. Many residents still thought that they would fly on again this time. An 18-year-old miner's wife said that many had unsuspectingly looked out of their windows to see the white streaks in the sky. Almost 1,000 bombs fell in a short space of time. After just 24 minutes, the colliery settlement was a scene of destruction. A contemporary witness reported: "An icy silence in the entire residential area! Everything is deserted, a district without life, but full of the horror of destruction. Dead and unconscious people lie in the streets. People are buried in the rubble of their homes. Carters are dying on the colliery square and horses are dying in the harness. No telephone connection! No electricity! No gas! No water!"188 people died that day, including 14 children alone who perished in the classroom of the Diesterweg School. More than half of the 1,298 colliery apartments were destroyed or severely damaged. 600 people were left homeless. Temporary homes were built for them and the habitable company housing was rationed. There was a great willingness to help one another, homeless and bombed-out people were taken in, later even refugees from Aachen. The dead were initially housed in the old parish church. After a funeral service, all these dead - including entire families - were buried in the West and East cemeteries. Many of them could no longer be identified. One contemporary witness recalled: "Later, when we were clearing up, we sometimes found dead bodies that had actually already been buried. It was always a terrible thing for me when we found a schoolchild who still had their knapsack on and looked as if nothing had happened at all - and we could then see who it was from the knapsack. I then had to go to the parents and tell them that we had found their daughter or son. The devastating bombing raid in March 1944 was not the last blow to the colliery colony. On September 19, 1944, another attack took place, killing 33 people and depriving a further 200 people of their homes. Contemporary witnesses remember that it was now the case that low-flying aircraft were literally hunting people down. Normal life was no longer possible in the city anyway. Everyone was waiting for the end of this madness.....
