The Halbe Forest Cemetery is mainly home to the victims of the Halbe Battle. More than 40,000 people lost their lives in the heavy fighting at the end of April 1945.
Cemetery description
The municipality of Halbe is located in the Brandenburg district of Dahme-Spreewald, about 60 kilometers south of Berlin. The Halbe Forest Cemetery is located on seven hectares of woodland. The site consists of eleven large burial plots and was designed by Walter Funcke and Karl Foerster.
Occupancy
Around 24,000 victims of the Battle of Halbe rest in the forest cemetery - German soldiers and civilian casualties. The dead of other victim groups, including Soviet forced laborers and people murdered in the German execution site in Berlin-Tegel and in the Ketschendorf internment camp, also have their final resting place in the forest cemetery.
History
Parallel to the Battle of Berlin, on April 27, 1945, barely combat-capable remnants of German troops and civilians fleeing to the west were trapped by Soviet troops in a small wooded area between Märkisch Buchholz and Halbe. Large parts of the German military units were able to break out of the encirclement to the west on April 29 and 30. Around 40,000 people lost their lives in the fighting in the encirclement, including many civilians who had fled from the eastern territories with their refugee treks and ended up in the encirclement. The warm early summer favored the decomposition process of the corpses. To counter the risk of epidemics, the local Soviet occupying power ordered the dead to be buried immediately on the spot, individually or in mass graves, in gardens or shell craters. Numerous temporary burial sites were created in the woods and along the roadsides. Individual graves were even created in the villagers' gardens.
It was not until 1951 that the reburial of the dead scattered around Halbe began at the central cemetery. The state of Brandenburg carried out this action together with the church, which set up a single parish in the village. Pastor Ernst Teichmann took over the position and completed the registration of the previously known graves with the help of the local population and against the resistance of local authorities.
From 2002 to 2023, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (German War Graves Commission) ensured the maintenance of the largest and most important site in Brandenburg. Since then, the weathered and sometimes illegible grave markers have been gradually replaced and supplemented, the burial areas have been re-vegetated and groups of symbolic crosses have been erected. in 2004, a total of 49 name plates with the approximately 4,600 names of the known victims of the Ketschendorf camp were erected in Block 9. in 2006, the paths were renewed and regular maintenance work was carried out on the site. Since January 1, 2024, the Schenkenländchen cemetery authority has been responsible for the care and maintenance of the war cemetery.
Special feature
Since May 10, 2012, the Volksbund has been offering an electronic cemetery guide at the forest cemetery in Halbe. An audio guide leads visitors through the memorial site and provides information about the graves and the Battle of Halbe.
