The German war cemetery in Bratislava is located on the Ružinovský Cintorín (Rosenheim Cemetery) in the Vrakuòa district. It is the resting place of the dead of the Second World War.
Description of the cemetery
The war cemetery is located in the northern part of the municipal cemetery and borders the cemetery wall. A sparse stand of trees and hedges surrounds the area.
The entrance area is marked by two one-meter high wall segments made of natural stone. A stone slab identifies the site as a German military cemetery. The paved path that divides the gravesite leads up three steps to the memorial square. It is laid out in a semicircle. In the middle is a wooden high cross, in front of which is a plaque with a bilingual inscription. Metal plates with names commemorate the approximately 1,800 dead who could not be recovered. Stone slabs on both sides of the path show the names of those buried among the unknown. A book of names is available in the gatehouse of the cemetery.
Burial
More than 1,000 German soldiers from the Second World War are buried at the Bratislava war cemetery.
History
The Volksbund's work began in 1990 in the east of what was then Czechoslovakia. The first collective cemetery was inaugurated in Zborov in 1992. humenné and Prešov followed in 1994. The Hunkovce war cemetery was completed in 1995, the one in Važec - the largest in Slovakia - in 1998, and the cemetery in Bratislava was inaugurated in 2000. This was followed by the restoration and consolidation of cemeteries from the First World War. Today, around 16,000 German soldiers are buried in six Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V. cemeteries in what is now the Slovak Republic
The legal basis for the work of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V. was initially the German-Czechoslovak Neighborhood Treaty of February 27, 1992. On March 2, 1999, the Federal Republic of Germany and the Slovak Republic concluded a war graves agreement, which came into force on August 12, 2000.
The city of Bratislava provided the Volksbund with an area near the Rosenheim cemetery's funeral hall for a collective cemetery. All German soldiers who lost their lives in Bratislava and the surrounding area were to find their final resting place there. the reburials began in 1997. in 1999, work began on the extension of the memorial. On June 17, 2000, the Volksbund dedicated the war cemetery. The grave crosses, whose inscriptions were not yet complete, were supplemented with the corresponding dates in 2008. Grave crosses are gradually being erected for newly buried victims.
Special feature
Directly next to the German war cemetery is a Turkish military cemetery with a memorial dedicated to the Turkish dead of the First World War.
