Hameln Prison Reburials

[Janssen]

Between 1945 and 1949, following a series of war crimes trials, the British executed a total of 202 alleged German war criminals. One hundred and fifty five of them were hanged in Hamelin Prison by Albert Pierrepoint.

The majority of those executed were members of Concentration Camp staff from Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrück and Neuengamme. After execution, their corpses were buried in mass graves within the prison grounds.

In 1950, the British handed Hamelin Prison back to the Germans. There followed years of agitation by right wing elements in Lower Saxony to give the executed Germans a decent burial. In March 1954, the German prison authorities set about exhuming the bodies from the prison yard, identifying the remains and putting them in separate coffins for reburial in individual plots. A total of 91 bodies were reburied in hallowed ground in Hamelin's Am Wehl Cemetery.

Cemetery officials said no memorials would be allowed on the graves but wooden crosses would be allowed if relatives paid for them. Right up until the 1980s, there were local citizens’ initiatives to tend the graves and erect wooden crosses in memory of those executed.

In 1986, after a mass demonstration by the Neo-Nazi Free German Workers’ Party (FAP), the town council abandoned the site and it was left to grow wild.

Here is a photo of the burial site taken in 2013.

nazi graves am wehl.jpg

Does anybody have any more information on this subject, in particular, photos of the site before the town council abandoned it?

[Janssen]

Here is a news report about the reburials from March 8, 1954

Germany Reburies Executed Nazis

http://www.jta.org/1954/03/08/archive/g ... in-britain

[Janssen]

Here is a link to the website where I stole the photograph.

http://www.historymatters.group.shef.ac ... bury-nazi/

Written by a Leicester University lecturer, she says that the burial site operated normally from 1954 until the early 1980s, a period of about 30 years. I can't find any newspaper reports online, except for a report on the reburials which I have linked to in the post above.

Anybody seriously interested in Nazi Germany would surely have visited the site, either to pay their respects, or just out of morbid curiosity - whatever your point of view.

We are talking about the graves of these people.

Irma Grese, josef Kramer.jpg

It's hard to believe that if the graves were there for 30 years nobody knows anything about them.

[Paul D]

Janssen

have you tried contacting Hameln museum they may have some details for you, i know they had a display regarding hameln during the ww2

http://www.hameln.de/kultur/kultur/museum/index.htm

[siwiec]

One small photo here:



http://www.badnenndorf2014.trauermarsch ... hameln-ab/

[Janssen]

One small photo here:



http://www.badnenndorf2014.trauermarsch ... hameln-ab/

That is exactly what I was looking for.

One of those crosses is probably the grave of Irma Grese, the poor girl they called the beautiful beast. The article says they levelled the site in 1986. I'm not sure what that means but I doubt if the bodies were disturbed. I assume they just removed the crosses and allowed the site to grow wild.

Thank you very much for your help.

[Janssen]

Janssen

have you tried contacting Hameln museum they may have some details for you, i know they had a display regarding hameln during the ww2

http://www.hameln.de/kultur/kultur/museum/index.htm

Good idea. I will contact them and ask them if they can supply any more information.

It would be interesting to know if the bodies were disturbed when they levelled the site.

[LineDoggie]

One of those crosses is probably the grave of Irma Grese, the poor girl they called the beautiful beast.

"Poor Girl"?

[George_W]

And

Anybody seriously interested in Nazi Germany would surely have visited the site, either to pay their respects, or just out of morbid curiosity - whatever your point of view.

Pay respect to whom? Irma Grese and Josef Kramer?
I hope it was a joke

George

[Skyderick]

... to pay their respects... We are talking about the graves of these people. Irma Grese, Josef Kramer. One of those crosses is probably the grave of Irma Grese, the poor girl...

Lovely.

[Janssen]

I take the same view as the respected Jewish Publisher Victor Gollancz.

When the bodies were reburied in 1954, he wrote a letter to The Times.

Victor Gollancz 1.png

[Skyderick]

I take the same view as the respected Jewish Publisher Victor Gollancz.
When the bodies were reburied in 1954, he wrote a letter to The Times.

Your point being? They have already been reburied. Suppose you want Polish and Jewish survivors to light candles on their yahrzeit? Or maybe the local municipality should tend to the graves of these national heroes, since their families clearly don't want to?
Even Gollancz, who "lived by the teachings of Christ and Saint Francis of Assisi" wouldn't call Grese a poor girl.

I take the liberty of supplying the complete article you copied, since it also features some different opinions:

[Little John]

Between 1945 and 1949, following a series of war crimes trials, the British executed a total of 202 alleged German war criminals. One hundred and fifty five of them were hanged in Hamelin Prison by Albert Pierrepoint.

The majority of those executed were members of Concentration Camp staff from Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrück and Neuengamme. After execution, their corpses were buried in mass graves within the prison grounds.

In 1950, the British handed Hamelin Prison back to the Germans. There followed years of agitation by right wing elements in Lower Saxony to give the executed Germans a decent burial. In March 1954, the German prison authorities set about exhuming the bodies from the prison yard, identifying the remains and putting them in separate coffins for reburial in individual plots. A total of 91 bodies were reburied in hallowed ground in Hamelin's Am Wehl Cemetery.

Cemetery officials said no memorials would be allowed on the graves but wooden crosses would be allowed if relatives paid for them. Right up until the 1980s, there were local citizens’ initiatives to tend the graves and erect wooden crosses in memory of those executed.

In 1986, after a mass demonstration by the Neo-Nazi Free German Workers’ Party (FAP), the town council abandoned the site and it was left to grow wild.

Here is a photo of the burial site taken in 2013.

nazi graves am wehl.jpg

Does anybody have any more information on this subject, in particular, photos of the site before the town council abandoned it?

Hi I'm sorry to reopen an old topic but I will be in Hameln this weekend and was planning to go out to the cemetery Am Wehl to look for this gravesite. Not to bestow any flowers or anything but just out of morbid curiosity as I've had a lifelong interest in The Holocaust and am currently researching one Dorothea Binz whom I believe is buried there. The question is, Does anyone know exactly where in the cemetery grounds this grave is located? I will have limited time in Hameln and don't want to spend all day searching the graveyard so any specific directions would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

[Konrad Hagen]

Hello Big John,

I went as far as the entrance of the Friedhof on Friday morning (I had very limited time). Car parking is good and the site is open over the weekend.

I believe the part of the cemetery you are looking for is CIII. I would search the northern part of the cemetery first. From the photographs it appears as though you want to find a path with high ground on either side of it. There is a florist at the bottom of the hill near the main road if you wish to buy flowers (not the one annotated on the satellite photograph by the cemetery entrance). Please let us know how you get on.

















The Jew, Gelderblom, has a webpage recounting (in a prejudiced manner) incidents surrounding those graves in 1986. Although biased the article is worth reading if only for the contemporary press reports contained within it.

http://www.gelderblom-hameln.de/zuchtha ... 51986.html

[nora93]

The Jew, Gelderblom, has a webpage recounting (in a prejudiced manner) incidents surrounding those graves in 1986. Although biased the article is worth reading if only for the contemporary press reports contained within it.

http://www.gelderblom-hameln.de/zuchtha ... 51986.html

Bernhard Gelderblom is not Jewish but ethnic German. Not that his ethnic background has any relevance.