Klaipėda (German: Memel) is a port city located about 290 kilometers northwest of the capital Vilnius.
Burial
As early as the First World War, around 100 German soldiers who died during the fighting in the Memel region were buried at the war cemetery. It remains to be seen how many died in Lithuania during the First World War - it is estimated to have been at least 30,000.
It is estimated that a further 20,000 soldiers fell in Lithuania during the Second World War, with around 10,000 not surviving as prisoners of war. Their mortal remains were buried in more than 2,000 cemeteries and smaller burial sites. Some gravesites were later built over or overburied with the civilian dead.
In Klaipeda, residents made it possible to redesign the cemetery with donations in the 1930s. At the beginning of the Second World War, the site was enlarged and around 1,300 more war dead found their final resting place here. Most of them were soldiers who had fallen in retreat battles in the fall of 1944. Apart from a small section that was built over with a road, the cemetery in Klaipeda has been preserved.
History
The political upheaval in Eastern Europe enabled the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V. (German War Graves Commission) to become active there from 1991. Many military cemeteries from the First and Second World Wars were repaired and hundreds of thousands of war dead were reburied.
In Klaipeda, the Volksbund began in 1995 to develop the site as a collective cemetery for German war dead from the districts of Klaipėda (Memel), Telsiai (Telschen), Siauliai (Schaulen), Taurage (Tauroggen) and Raseiniai (Raseinen). He still lays the dead to rest on this site - up to 5,000 can find their final resting place here. Inscription plaques immortalize the names of those already buried. The site was opened to the public on August 28, 1998.
The Volksbund's work is based on a war graves agreement concluded between Germany and Lithuania on July 4, 1996. The War Graves Commission cooperates closely with the Ministry of Culture, the Cultural Heritage Protection Service and the local authorities.
Special feature
A memorial stone in the central square of the Klaipėda war cemetery commemorates the soldiers who died when the troop transport "Füsilier" sank in 1944. The ship sank north of the city after artillery fire from Soviet troops.
