Soviet-Russian Second World War Cemetery Simmerath-Rurberg

A total of around 760.000 Soviet citizens were buried in Germany as a result of the Second World War, most of them soldiers of the Soviet Army and forced labourers. The Soviet-Russian Second World War Cemetery Simmerath-Rurberg holds the remains 2.322 of them – men, women and children. Only fifty-five of them rest in individual graves, the others in mass graves. Just a small number is known by name. Here in Simmerath-Rurberg almost all of the buried were also prisoners of war or forced labourers. They died in consequence of hardship in the labour camps or as a result of Allied bomb strikes. After the war was over many small Soviet cemeteries were established all over Germany. The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge united 38 of these cemeteries in the region of Monschau, Erkelenz, Geilenkirchen, Aachen, Jülich, Düren and Schleiden in Germany and Rurberg in Belgium. Most of the dead were transferred from Düren, where in the course of the war 1.522 forced labourers died in arms factories. The Simmerath-Rurberg Cemetery was officially opened in 1961.