Ysselsteyn is the largest German war cemetery in the world in terms of area. The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge maintains one of its four youth meeting and educational centers there.
Cemetery description
The Ysselsteyn war cemetery is located just 20 kilometers from the Dutch-German border. It is the only German war cemetery in the Netherlands and is located eight kilometers southwest of the city of Venray in the province of Limburg. At 28 hectares, it is the largest German war cemetery in the world. The cemetery is divided into 116 blocks, most with twelve rows of 25 graves each. Almost all of the fallen are buried in individual graves.
Burial
All German soldiers who died on Dutch territory during the Second World War are buried in the cemetery. Also buried here are Dutch, Polish and Soviet soldiers who fought in German uniform, as well as 87 war dead from the First World War. Around 3,000 German soldiers were moved from the American military cemetery in Margraten to Ysselsteyn in 1946. Most of them died in the final months of the war in Aachener Land or during the fighting on the Rur. Ysselsteyn is also home to 1,700 German soldiers who died in the Arnhem area and 475 German war dead from the island of Texel who died in the "Georgian Uprising". Men, women and children from the internment camp in Vught were also laid to rest in Ysselsteyn.
History
The cemetery in Ysselsteyn was not initially planned for this location. The Netherlands originally wanted to exhume all the German war dead in the country and have them buried in a collective cemetery in Germany. The Dutch government complied with the request of the United States of America to leave the German war dead in the Netherlands. On October 15, 1946, the Dutch burial service began to exhume all German war dead from civilian cemeteries and field graves in the country and bury them in the cemetery in Ysselsteyn. In close cooperation with the German office in Berlin and the Volksbund, the Dutch burial service identified 7,330 dead after opening the graves with unknown persons.
the visitor center was opened in 2021. There, a new multimedia exhibition illustrates the history of the war cemetery and tells of the fates behind the crosses. Rooms for conferences, lectures and presentations are available in the visitor center, which are used as part of educational projects. The Ysselsteyn war cemetery is one of the stops on the "Liberation Route Europe". The "Liberation Route" connects historical sites along which the Allied forces advanced from southern England via Normandy to Berlin from 1944.
Special feature
in 1982, the "Ysselsteyn Project" was launched, in which war cemeteries serve as meeting places, especially for young people. Since then, school classes, youth and adult groups have been able to take part in historical, political and peace education programs at the Ysselsteyn Youth Meeting and Education Center. The Volksbund maintains further youth meeting and educational centers at the war cemeteries in Golm (Germany), Lommel (Belgium) and Niederbronn-Les-Bains (France).
