This vast and haunting place is more than just a graveyard, it is a burial site with three different parts. All three lie on one side of the road to Volgograd (Stalingrad), on the other lies the massive Military Memorial Cemetery of Russia; their closeness a brutal reminder of the futility of these deaths, Russian and German alike.
More than 100 Granite cubes are bearing the names of 100 000 soldiers missing in action They died here, somewhere, about an hour’s drive away from Volgograd, the former Stalingrad. Nobody knows where. This is a graveyard without bodies. Names without bones.
Some 50.000 dead soldiers were buried here, only half of them were known by name, those names known are engraved in the stone wall circling that mass grave. The other half are bones without names.
On the right of the entrance is the old Wehrmachtsfriedhof where around 600 Germans were buried while the war was still raging. These were the first to be interred here. The rest of the graves came much later. The official opening was in 1999.
Three villages once stood here in the plains of Stalingrad. Now there is nothing, just grass, wind, and the graves of thousands of men who died on this land, died for their land, never to return home.
sorces & further reading:
Graveyards of Germany 