Walking the Ground – Waldfriedhof Halbe/Halbe forest cemetery

Today sees the release of the final episode in my series “Encircled: The Halbe Pocket Podcast”, so fittingly, it’s also time to shine a light on the ‘Waldfriedhof’ in Halbe, which serves as the heart of the commemorative efforts regarding the battle of the Halbe Pocket.

Here, in one of Germany’s largest Second World War cemeteries, more than 28,000 people are buried.

The cemetery was first established in 1951, thanks to the tireless efforts of the local Halbe priest Ernst Teichmann. He spent decades ensuring that the soldiers and civilians who had been killed in the fighting received a proper burial in this cemetery (many had been buried next to the side of the road in mass unmarked graves, or they had been buried in the foxholes they died in).

Befitting the chaos of the Halbe Pocket itself, there are graves from many different groups who were caught up in the fighting. – German soldiers, refugees, forced foreign labourers, foreign volunteers in the German army, and, of course, children, can all be found here.

Undoubtedly, some of the Wehrmacht and SS soldiers buried here are guilty of heinous crimes, whilst others interred here would have been young or elderly Volkssturm conscripts thrown into the frontline in April 1945.

But for many, we’ll never know their story. Because of the more than 28,000 people buried here, many thousands of them remain unidentified, their stories still untold.

Today, the cemetery is managed by the German War Graves Commission, who still work tirelessly to find, bury, and identify the many dead who are found each year in the area. In 2020, 170 bodies were newly interred in the Halbe Waldfriedhof, and in 2022, a further 86 bodies were laid to rest here.

The silence is perhaps the most fitting “final words” regarding the battle of the Halbe Pocket…

Hear about the Halbe Waldfriedhof in the final episode of Encircled: The Halbe Pocket Podcast.