Bad Zwischenahn - Ofen, Ev.- luth. Friedhof

There are two adjacent cemeteries at the back of this cemetery. One of these is classified as an official war cemetery and contains 58 grave crosses. Right next to it is a burial ground that has been set up as a memorial for patients who died at the Wehnen sanatorium and nursing home. The 58 people who died at the war cemetery were mainly forced laborers in Germany. They come from Poland and the Soviet Union, but there are also two Belgian, two Swiss, one Romanian, one Swedish, one Lithuanian and one Danish citizen on the cemetery. Most of them were patients of the former Wehnen sanatorium and nursing home. In his work "Wat mööt wir hier smachten", first published in 1996, Oldenburg historian Ingo Harms details that Polish, Russian and Ukrainian forced laborers in particular were among the victims of the inhumane and deadly Nazi policy towards physically and mentally ill people in the institution. He states that the mortality rate was at least 37 percent, but probably far higher. In most cases, the men, women and children fell victim to the reduction of rations to a level that was no longer life-sustaining. Also buried on this cemetery are three German military personnel who died in the First World War and German military personnel from the Second World War. They died either shortly before the end of the war in May 1945 or after the end of the war. The burial ground of the former institutional cemetery, where the dead of the patient murders - in mass graves - were also buried, was levelled in 1995. These dead are commemorated by a memorial and, since 2008, a specially designed area. In addition to a pillow stone, there are 1500 smaller stones on this memorial site, which stand for the dead of the "wild euthanasia" in the sanatorium and nursing home. Further information is available at the Old Pathology Memorial on the grounds of the Karl Jaspers Clinic, which is run by the Memorial Circle for the Relatives of Victims of Nazi Euthanasia in the Wehnen Sanatorium and Nursing Home. https://gedenkkreis.de/gedenkstatte-wehnen Photos: Volker Fleig 2015