Germany Is Still Burying It's Eastern Front Dead

Russia's gigantic monument to the Battle of Stalingrad, the Mother Motherland statue. The German losses on the Eastern Front were enormous. But the number of Soviet military casualties was much higher. AFP

New Cemetery in Russia: Germany Still Burying Eastern Front Dead -- Spiegel Online

After spending two decades recovering almost 800,000 soldiers in Eastern Europe and Russia, Germany will open its last war cemetery in Russia on Saturday. The work isn't over, though, as the war graves commission has located a further 400,000 dead.

Germany will open its last big war cemetery in Russia on Saturday, marking the culmination of a huge effort to recover Wehrmacht soldiers killed on its Eastern Front in World War II.

By the end of this year, the German war graves commission will have found and reburied a total of 800,000 soldiers in Eastern Europe and Russia since 1992, when the former Eastern bloc countries began helping Germany retrieve the remains of missing soldiers following the end of the Cold War.

On Saturday, German Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière will hold a speech at the inauguration of the new war cemetery at the town of Dukhovschina, near the city of Smolensk in western Russia.

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My Comment: I have been to the World War I cemeteries in France. Normandy. Arlington Cemetery. The Vietnam Memorial. A few others. But nothing .... and I mean nothing .... has ever come close to the experience of visiting the war cemeteries of Russia .... the experience has always been overwhelming.