Prisoner-of-War Camp Wietzendorf : History and Remembrance

Over 50,000 Soviet soldiers were sent to the Prisoner-of-War Camp Wietzendorf, 16,000 of whom died. During the Second World War, the small village of Wietzendorf in the Lüneburg Heath became the scene of a harrowing chapter in history. It was a place of unimaginable suffering for over 50,000 Soviet soldiers. The catastrophic living conditions led to mass deaths from autumn 1941 onwards. With 16,000 victims, the Soviet POW cemetery is one of the largest war cemeteries in Germany. The authors Silke Petry and Rolf Keller provide detailed information about the fate of the prisoners in Wietzendorf, with exemplary biographies allowing personal insights. They also describe the construction and remodelling of the cemeteries for the victims and look at the changes in the culture of remembrance up to recent times. It is a lively appeal against forgetting and a tribute to local commitment.