A Sunday Afternoon in the Frankfurt Main Cemetery–The War Sections

This afternoon after our church meetings, we took a walk in the cemetery near our apartment. The sun was warm and the shadows grew long. We were quiet as we walked, taking it all in. Today we went to the War Section where we walked among the gravesites of 6,700 men, women, and children from Germany and other countries who lost their lives in both World Wars, including victims of the Nazis. There was a profound feeling of peace here, peace that “passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4:7).

This war area is divided into a section for World War 1 and another for World War 2. Most of the First World War graves were German soldiers who were wounded in the war, and then taken to hospitals in Frankfurt where they died, often from the Spanish Flu. Others were transferred here from their places of death on the front lines for burial in the main cemetery.

Nearby is the burial ground for victims of the Nazis near a beautiful bronze statue of Job looking down at the ground. Both lying and standing tablets mark the graves for 1,4000 dead who were relocated to the cemetery after the War, including prisoners of concentration camps, prisons, slave laborers, and Soviet prisoners of war.

There is also a plaque remembering the people with disabilities and mental illness who were murdered by the Nazis.

Dozens and dozens of the gravestones said “Unbekannt,” or “Unknown.” I wanted to pause by each stone and honor them in some way, but there were just too many.

So many of these victims of the Great Wars were so young, cut down in the prime of their lives.

These are the older WWI headstones:

I reflect often on the gift Jesus Christ gave when He laid down his life for each one of us. And then He rose from the dead on that Easter Morning, giving us each the gift of eternal life. I am So Grateful. “Oh grave where is thy victory, oh death, where is thy sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55-57.)