Ysselsteyn German War Cemetery is a military cemetery interring casualties of the First and Second World Wars. It contains over 31,000 soldiers from around 25 countries, including SS-men and Dutch war criminals. This cemetery is located in the village of Ysselsteyn in the

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

Venray Venray or Venraij (; li, Venroj) is a municipality and a city in Limburg, the Netherlands. The municipality of Venray consists of 14 towns over an area of , with 43,494 inhabitants as of July 2016. About 30,000 of those inhabitants live in th ...

Limburg Limburg or Limbourg may refer to: Regions * Limburg (Belgium), a province since 1839 in the Flanders region of Belgium * Limburg (Netherlands), a province since 1839 in the south of the Netherlands * Diocese of Limburg, Roman Catholic Diocese in ...

, Netherlands, and is east of Eindhoven. Ysselsteyn is the largest Second World War German cemetery and is the only Nazi-German cemetery in the Netherlands. Following the war, the Nazi soldiers were reburied in the cemetery. The deceased include Germans, Dutch, Poles, and Russians who fought on the side of the Nazis.

World War I and II burials

Most burials are soldiers killed during the German occupation from May 1940 to May 1945 in

the Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. Around 250 of the dead (Nazi-German

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the '' Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previo ...

and SS, as well as collaborating Dutch), were killed by the Dutch resistance. Around 3,000 of the burials were soldiers detailed to occupation duties, including razzias,

deportation Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The term ''expulsion'' is often used as a synonym for deportation, though expulsion is more often used in the context of international law, while deportation ...

s, illegal incarceration, Jew-hunting, and other war crimes. 250 more deaths (

) are from the

Battle of the Bulge The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. The battle lasted from 16 December 1944 to 28 January 1945, towards the end of the war in ...

in the Ardennes and

Hürtgenwald Hürtgenwald is a municipality in the district of Düren in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the Eifel hills, approx. 15 km south-west of Düren. Much of the area is covered by forest (Hürtgenwald in li ...

that were initially interred next to the

Netherlands American Cemetery Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial ( nl, Amerikaanse Begraafplaats Margraten) is a Second World War military war grave cemetery, located in the village of Margraten, east of Maastricht, in the most southern part of the Netherlands. The ...

Margraten Margraten (; li, Mergraote) is a village and a former municipality in the southeastern part of the Netherlands. On 1 January 2011 this former municipality merged with a neighbouring one, which resulted in the new Eijsden-Margraten municipality. ...

. In a circle near the entrance lie 85 German soldiers who died in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

and whose bodies floated to the Netherlands down rivers, mainly the

Meuse The Meuse ( , , , ; wa, Moûze ) or Maas ( , ; li, Maos or ) is a major European river, rising in France and flowing through Belgium and the Netherlands before draining into the North Sea from the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta. It has a t ...

. The Netherlands remained neutral during the First World War. Over 5,000 unknown burials are located in the cemetery and were marked incorrectly as "Ein Deutscher Soldat" (A German Soldier). After World War II, all German fatalities were buried there. In 1976 administration was transferred to the German War Graves Commission (''Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge''). The designation as a German burial ground is disputed as many buried there were non-Germans serving in the German armed forces, comprising 25 nationalities. Dutch, Belgian, Russian, Czech, and many tens of so-called "Volksdeutsche" from Poland, the Danzig Free State, Luxemburg, Slovakia, and even

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...

and

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of t ...

may also be buried there.

Architecture

The cemetery covers approximately . Most burials are in individual graves marked by a grey concrete cross that includes (where known) the name, rank, and dates of birth and death. A tall cross stands in the central memorial plaza. Roads extending right and left from the plaza contain a carillon and common graves. A memorial stone honors Captain Johan Lodewijk Timmermans, a Dutchman who served as manager of the cemetery from 1948 to 1976 on behalf of the Dutch government. Upon his death, his ashes were scattered at the cemetery per his request.

Protests

From the 1960s, protests were lodged against the German dead and the cemetery. The protests were revived in 2013, when the Dutch Anti-Fascists' League AFVN discovered that since the year 2000, the German ambassador had been holding yearly commemorations there. In 2020, the AFVN started a petition against the visits of the ambassador with Dutch and German Jews joining the effort, along with

Beate Klarsfeld Beate Auguste Klarsfeld (née Künzel; born 13 February 1939) is a Franco-German journalist and Nazi hunter who, along with her French husband, Serge, became famous for their investigation and documentation of numerous Nazi war criminals, inc ...

and the management of the former Dachau concentration camp. The ambassador ended the practice. In 2020, the American Ambassador to the Netherlands visited the cemetery and tweeted photos of the graves.

Neo-Nazis

The cemetery gets irregular visits from Neonazis. In November 2020, a Belgian woman placed flowers on the grave of the first Dutch SS-volunteer Willem Heubel.

Gallery

Ijes 004.JPG CemeteryYsselsteyn5.jpg CemeteryYsselsteyn2.jpg Ijes 014.JPG Ysselsteyn War Cemetery 01.jpg Yss (1 of 1).jpg Yss2 (1 of 1).jpg

Films

CEFRG: ''Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof Ysselsteyn''
at YouTube.
Michael Mustermann: ''Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof Kriegsgräberstätte Ysselsteyn, Niederlande''
at Youtube.
Longa Via Est: ''Duitse Oorlogsbegraafplaats Ysselsteyn (German war cemetery Ysselsteyn)''
at YouTube.
Na de bevrijding WO2: ''75 jaar vrijheid: oorlogsbegraafplaats Ysselsteyn''
at Youtube.
Wolffman325: ''Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof Ysselsteyn Niederlande. Duitse Militaire begraafplaats''
at YouTube.
Omroep Venray: Hans Sakkers: ''Lezing Duitse Militaire Begraafplaats Ysselsteyn''
at YouTube.
The Battlefield Explorer: ''German War Cemetery Ysselsteyn – Over 30,000 Graves''
at YouTube.

References

External links

Ysselsteyn German war cemetery (Deutsche Kriegsgräberstätte Ysselsteyn) at ''Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge''

* ttp://en.tracesofwar.com/article/37/Duitse-Oorlogsbegraafplaats-Ysselsteyn.htm Ysselsteyn German war cemetery at tracesofwar
Find a Grave: Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof Ysselsteyn

Stichting Kennispunt Mei 1940 – German war cemetery IJsselsteijn

Youth Meeting Centre Ysselsteyn (Internationale Jugendbegegnungs- und Bildungsstätte Ysselsteyn)
{{Authority control 1940s architecture Cemeteries in Limburg (Netherlands) Cemeteries in the Netherlands German War Graves Commission Venray World War I memorials World War II cemeteries in the Netherlands