Bedburg-Hau-Kriegsgräberstätte

This war cemetery is home to 857 war dead from World War I and II. World War I. World War I: 68 II. World War II: 789 A field and reserve hospital was set up in the provincial hospital in Bedburg-Hau at the beginning of March 1940, followed by a naval hospital with 2,000 beds from May until 1944. After its destruction on September 26, 1944, the St. Antonius Hospital from Kleve was also accommodated in two buildings. From November, two field hospitals (army and air force) were set up. Finally, large parts of the civilian population of the lower Lower Rhine were evacuated there by the Allies, with a camp of around 1,000 "displaced persons" (almost exclusively former forced laborers) existing at the same time. In March 1945, a total of 28,000 people were living in the institution or in surrounding tent camps. 367 people - mostly infants and old people - died. Added to this were the consequences of the war: civilians from Bienen, for example, who had been wounded, succumbed to their injuries in Bedburg-Hau hospital in April 1945. They were initially buried there and only transferred to Bienen in January 1949. Life in the camp ended in April 1945. On February 19, 1946, the municipal administration rejected a request to build an ossuary. Nevertheless, they wanted to continue using the cemetery on the grounds of the sanatorium, which had already been established in the course of the military hospitals. In February 1947, the Hasselt office reported that there were still scattered graves. The individual graves were now to be reburied in Bedburg-Hau. By 1948, the site had already been clearly marked. The Allied authorities had reburied "deported persons" and "foreign civilian workers" before March 1948. The site was officially under the control of the Rhineland Regional Association. in 1949, this was approved as an exception, as it could also be permanently maintained by the institutional nursery Sources: KA Kleve, old files, file numbers 32 57 01/06 and 32 57 01/3. Josef MISSEN: Chronik der Gemeinde Bedburg-Hau, Bedburg-Hau 1990, pp. 210 to 247. With the kind support of the Bedburg-Hau municipal archives.