Gasp, looks moving.
it is, went twice until now…must go back with my new semi-professional camera
This is only te second time i have seen pitures of a cemetrey for german fighting men.
Tahnks for sharing them.
shafs.
Excellent and touching photos, Koen, thank you. I have been there once but I was a 12 year old kid by then and don’t recall too many details, have to go back for once.
In fact, the cemetary of Lommel/Belgium is the biggest german military cemetary in Western Europe. 38560 bodies from WW2 and 542 from WW1 are buried here, among those are 6221 unknown soldiers.
It is followed by Ijsselstein in the Netherlands where about 31000 soldiers are buried. Strange thought, the town of Ijsselstein itself has about 38000 inhabitants.
Lommel/Belgium
Ijsselstein/The Netherlands
this cemetery is in a very good status
The German cemeteries always looked rather grim in comparison with Commonwealth and American cemeteries.
Interestingly, I believe it is correct that the Germans have to pay ground rent for their cemeteries in Belgium whereas the allies were granted the ground for their cemeteries in perpetuity as a gift from the Belgian people.
One of the German cemetries from WW2 in Copenhagen:
http://flickr.com/search/?q=+Tyske+Vestre+Kirkegård&m=text
and
http://flickr.com/search/?q=German+Vestre&m=text
Maybe it’s the difference between the graves of the defeated and the victors? German cemeteries are indeed kinda chaste in comparison to american cemeteries with white marble, american flags and impressive colomns. Never saw a british military cemetery or canadian though. In our area there is a cemetery of russian POW’s, quite interesting with that eastern european touch and all. Will hand some pictures when I come to the place once again.
I don’t know if you guys know that not a single american soldier is (officialy) buried in Germany for they shouldn’t rest in enemy soil.
Man of Stoat, interesting information about this rent-issue for military cemeteries. Never heard of that and got to check it out.
The german cemetery of La Cambe/Normandy (France) looks much more friendlier, I assume.
