Below you will find the database of all war dead who found their last resting place at the German Military Cemetery in Ysselsteyn. You can easily search for instance by name, dates or the site of the 1st (field) grave*. If you prefer an advanced search, all fields can be combined, possibly with a part of a name or a certain date. By clicking on the info-button, you are automatically redirected to the relevant “Find a Grave” memorial page for this war dead person, where in many cases more information can be found. However, if you need extra/additional information about a war dead person, please contact us.
*The site of the 1st (field) grave is not necessarily the place name of death.
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Cemetery History
The collection cemetery for German soldiers, at the end of 1946, was initially free of charge and made available for a maximum of 3 years with the intention of transferring the graves at a later stage, under a Peace Treaty, to Germany. However, such a peace treaty between the Netherlands and Germany was never signed, the state of war was first terminated on 26 July 1951.
Although there are several cemeteries in the Netherlands where German war victims have found their last resting place, most of them, that period buried at cemeteries and field graves throughout the Netherlands were being reburied at the German military cemetery in Ysselsteyn. Since there are still about 2.500 missing German soldiers resting in anonymous grave’s in the Netherlands, and now and then some get pulled out of oblivion, the number of war graves on the cemetery is still growing.
The German military cemetery in Ysselsteyn is the largest German military cemetery worldwide in terms of area of about 28ha, or 56 soccer fields, but this does not mean that most of the dead are buried here. Exact numbers are unfortunately not known, this is partly due to the sometimes sloppy administration, in addition about 237 deaths were reburied elsewhere in Europe, there are about 18 empty In Memoriam graves and also prominent traitors were anonymously buried here.
At Ysselsteyn rest mainly German soldiers, people in German military or administrative service and a small number of civilian victims of various nationalities, including women and children such as evacuees from the internment camp Vught. Although most of the graves are all in the form of a Latin cross, Ysselsteyn also contains about 73 mass graves for two or more deaths, often bearing a standing or lying tombstone.
Of the approximately 31.714 dead (status August 2018) resting on Ysselsteyn, 87 (of which are unknown 8) from the First World War and 31.627 (of which unknown 4.861) from the Second World War or the result thereof. In our database there may be confusion about the above number of unknowns because we have also included the names of the 2.669 undoubtedly identified dead, which were buried as an unknown soldier at that time, in our database which has come about through co-operation with Fred van den Munckhof, volunteer at Find A Grave.
Although the majority of the dead were killed or died during the Second World War in the Netherlands, around 3.075 German soldiers were buried at Ysselsteyn who fell during the battle of the Hürtgenwald and the Battle of the Bulge and were buried by the American service of graves at Margraten. At the end of 1946 these Germans were also transferred to Ysselsteyn.
On Friday, June 27 1952, the established cemetery was officially opened by means of a wreath laying by the German consul in the Netherlands and finally opened to the public after years of preparation.
Although we have an extensive archive of original documents at our disposal, we thought it would be a better idea to leave it at this brief summary, as the book “German management of Dutch heritage” is now available, detailing the painful history of this largest military cemetery in the Netherlands.