The city of Puławy is located in the Lubelskie (Lublin) Voivodeship (administrative region) of Poland. German soldiers who lost their lives in eastern Poland during World War II are buried at the war cemetery of the same name. The cemetery was opened on October 7, 2000.
Cemetery Description
The German war cemetery in Pulawy covers three hectares. It was established between 1996 and 2000. A winding main path leads through the grounds. It also passes through a memorial area where 25 steles commemorate the names of the soldiers laid to rest in this collective cemetery. A register of names is available in the cemetery’s entrance building. Groups of crosses mark the locations of the burial plots on the cemetery grounds, which the Polish government provided free of charge. Once the reburial work is complete, more than 27,000 German war dead are expected to be buried near Puławy. Their remains are being reinterred from the Mazowieckie (Masovia) and Lubelskie voivodeships. As of the end of 2016, there were 23,914 soldiers’ graves at the mass grave site, which was opened to the public on October 7, 2000. Through work camps, young people from all over Europe help maintain the grounds.
History
Within the present-day borders of the Republic of Poland, approximately 500,000 German soldiers lost their lives during World War II. They died mainly in combat during the German invasion of Poland in 1939, as a result of actions by the Polish resistance, and in 1945 while fighting 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. On December 8, 2003, a war graves agreement was concluded, which entered into force on January 19, 2005. Funded by the Federal Republic of Germany, 14 military cemeteries were established, including the Pulawy War Cemetery. As early as the beginning of the 1990s, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V. began searching for scattered burial sites of German war dead in Poland and reburying their remains in central war cemeteries. The first remains were interred at 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 conducted by the Volksbund. The remains of 20 soldiers were exhumed and later reburied at the collective cemetery near Pulawy.
Alfred Harry Keffel was laid to rest there on September 24, 2003. A detailed account of Alfred Keffel’s search for his father’s grave can be found on LeMo, https://www.hdg.de/lemo/zeitzeugen/alfred-hans-keffel-das-soldatengrab-meines-vaters.html, the joint portal of the German Historical Museum and the House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Bibliographic reference: (Keffel, Alfred: “My Father’s Soldier’s Grave,” in: LeMO-Zeitzeugen, Lebendiges Museum Online, Foundation House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany).
