The town of Pulawy belongs to the Polish voivodeship (administrative district) of Lubelskie (Lublin). German soldiers who lost their lives in eastern Poland during the Second World War are buried at the war cemetery of the same name. The cemetery was opened on October 7, 2000.
Description of the cemetery
The German war cemetery in Pulawy is three hectares in size. It was created between 1996 and 2000 and is accessed via a curved main path. It also runs across a memorial square, where 25 steles immortalize the names of the soldiers who were laid to rest in the collective cemetery. A book of names is available in the entrance building of the cemetery. Groups of crosses mark the location of the graves in the cemetery grounds, which the Polish government has made available free of charge. Once the reburial work has been completed, more than 27,000 German war dead will be buried at Pulawy. Their remains will be transferred from the Mazowieckie and Lubelskie voivodeships. At the end of 2016, there were 23,914 soldiers' graves at the collective cemetery, which was opened to the public on October 7, 2000. Young people from all over Europe help to maintain the site as part of work camps.
History
Around 500,000 German soldiers lost their lives within the current borders of the Republic of Poland during the Second World War. They died mainly in combat operations during the German attack on Poland in 1939, in actions by the Polish resistance and in 1945 in the fight against the advancing Soviet army. The German-Polish Neighborhood Treaty signed in 1991 forms the legal basis for the establishment of German war cemeteries in Poland. A war graves agreement was concluded on December 8, 2003, which came into force on January 19, 2005. Funded by the Federal Republic of Germany, 14 military cemeteries were built, including the Pulawy war cemetery. In the early 1990s, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V. (German War Graves Commission) began searching for scattered graves of German war dead in Poland and reburying their remains at central war cemeteries. The first dead were buried near Pulawy in 1994.
Special feature
The German soldier Alfred Harry Keffel is also buried at the Pulawy war cemetery. He died in Poland in 1945. His son, Alfred Keffel, searched for the grave of his father, whom he had never met. He found the grave on October 29, 2002 during an excavation carried out by the Volksbund. The remains of 20 soldiers were exhumed and later buried in the collective cemetery near Pulawy.
Alfred Harry Keffel found his final resting place there on September 24, 2003. A detailed account of Alfred Keffel's search for his father's grave can be found at LeMo, https://www.hdg.de/lemo/zeitzeugen/alfred-hans-keffel-das-soldatengrab-me ines-vaters.html, the joint portal of the German Historical Museum and Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland foundations.
Bibliography: (Keffel, Alfred: Das Soldatengrab meines Vaters, in: LeMO-Zeitzeugen, Lebendiges Museum Online, Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland).
