Berlin-Tempelhof, Friedhof Marienfelde

The cemetery of the Protestant parish of Marienfelde is somewhat hidden behind a row of residential properties in the south of Berlin near the old village center of Marienfelde. The cemetery has a closed complex of six rows of individual graves in which 285 victims of war and tyranny are buried, including eight from the First World War. These are primarily civilian and military victims of the Second World War, including two Russian forced laborers from the Berlin-Marienfelde foreigners' camp in Daimlerstraße who died young of pulmonary tuberculosis due to the poor living conditions, like so many other forced laborers. The Soviet camp inmates had to work for Daimler Benz AG. In addition to the individual graves, the cemetery also contains a semi-circular grave for 33 mostly Dutch and Czech forced laborers who were burned to death in a night-time British bombing raid and plane crash on a residential barracks camp in Säntisstraße in Berlin-Marienfelde on 14/15 November 1940 and were buried in this collective grave.A large granite boulder with an inscription and a bronze plaque with the names of the victims keep alive the memory of the 20 Dutch, 8 Czechs, two Germans and three people of unknown nationality who were forcibly employed in construction or industry. In Berlin, the forced labour camps were mostly located on company premises or in the immediate vicinity of the respective companies where the forced labourers were employed. As these companies were preferentially bombed as targets important to the war effort, many forced laborers died in air raids because they were forbidden to go to air raid shelters.