More than 6,000 German soldiers who died in the Second World War were buried in the Tobruk memorial. They rest in a monumental building with a floor area of 40 by 40 meters.
Cemetery description
Tobruk is located in the north of Libya on the Mediterranean Sea. The memorial - between 12 and 14 meters high - blends into the barren landscape in terms of the shape and color of the masonry. Four round towers, each with a diameter of six meters, border the memorial. The courtyard of honor in the middle is enclosed on three of its four sides by arcades. Beneath it is an underground crypt.
There are 20 niches on the sides. Three of the niches with relief decorations each show three soldiers of the former German Africa Corps standing in mourning in front of the grave of their comrades - on diabase slabs and stylized in ancient Egyptian technique. 15 arcade niches bear the names of the fallen buried in the crypt in mosaic on their back walls.
The central memorial consists of a fire bowl carried by four angels. A staircase in one of the towers leads to the upper terrace walkway. From there, there is a wide view over the barren landscape that was once the scene of the fierce battles for Tobruk.
Burial
More than 6,000 German casualties from the Libyan battlefield in the Second World War lie in individual sarcophagi in the crypt.
History
Tobruk was the scene of several fierce battles in the Second World War in 1941 and 1942. With the help of the local population, Volksbund employees recovered 98 percent of the German soldiers who fell in Libya during the field grave search in the desert from November 1951 to November 1953. The government of the then Kingdom of Libya supported the work in every possible way and granted the Volksbund the free exploitation of two quarries. The war cemetery was inaugurated on November 20, 1955.
Special feature
Note: Work is currently being carried out by the Libyan government to build a seawater desalination plant in Tobruk. Trenches were also dug along the memorial for this purpose. The construction work is currently suspended. Because of the trenches, the memorial can only be reached by car under difficult conditions.
