A documentary deals with the events of the war in Italy.
Cemetery description
The war cemetery is located on a narrow ridge above Lake Garda to the south of the village of Costermano. The terrain slopes steeply down towards Lake Garda and runs downhill in flat terraces to the east. The summit of the ridge affords a sweeping view of the landscape: Alpine peaks to the north, cypress-lined vineyards to the east and south and Lake Garda to the west.
A wide staircase leads through the hall of the entrance building to the middle and largest of three terraces on which the burial plots are located. The individual graves are marked by horizontal stone slabs. They bear the names, ranks, dates of birth and death of two of the dead. A flight of steps leads to the comrades' grave. There is a bronze figure depicting a kneeling young man. The life-size sculpture by Prof. Hans Wimmer is intended to evoke the memory of the suffering suffered by the many war dead who rest in Costermano. At the highest point of the cemetery complex, a map made of ceramic tiles in a small roofed building illustrates the provinces in which the dead buried in Costermano were originally buried. A documentary in the entrance building of the cemetery provides information about the events of the war in Italy.
Occupancy
Around 22,000 German war dead who died on Italian soil during the Second World War are buried at the Costermano war cemetery. The majority of these are German soldiers. Around 180 of the dead were of a different nationality, including many Austrians, but also French, Italians and Russians, for example. There are also around 60 women among the dead, who were deployed as nurses, air force or staff assistants. Even a 14-year-old Hitler Youth is buried in the cemetery.
History
Construction work on the war cemetery began in 1955 and the cemetery was officially opened on May 6, 1967 with great participation from relatives and the local population.
Special features
Among the war dead buried in Costermano are at least 16 people who are known to have committed or participated in war crimes and/or crimes against humanity. They include the SS members Christian Wirth, Gottfried Schwarz and Franz Reichleitner, who had been transferred from the General Government (Poland) to Italy to fight Italian partisans in the Adriatic coastal region under the code name "Aktion R" and to exterminate the Jewish population living there.
Prior to this, they had been instrumental in the murder of around two million Jews and Sinti and Roma in the Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Majdanek concentration camps in the Generalgouvernement. All three were killed in battles with Italian resistance groups. The war criminals brought unspeakable suffering to many people and their families. Their crimes remind us to learn from history and to respect human dignity.
NOTE FOR DISABLED PERSONS: Free access to the disabled toilet is only possible with a Euro key. The Euro key is a locking system introduced in 1986 by CBF Darmstadt - Club Behinderter und ihrer Freunde in Darmstadt und Umgebung e. V. - which is now standardized throughout Europe and enables physically disabled people to gain independent and free access to disabled-friendly sanitary facilities with a standard key. Information on how to obtain the key can be found here: CBF-Darmstadt e.V., Pallaswiesenstr. 123a, 64293 Darmstadt; Mon - Fri: 9 am - 12 pm & 1 pm - 4:30 pm; Tel: 06151 - 81 22 0
