Several hundred people visited the open day of the War Cemetery at Ysselsteyn on Saturday. There is the only German War Cemetery in the Netherlands with 87 dead from the First World War and almost 32,000 dead from the Second World War.
With an area of approximately 28 hectares, it is the largest German war cemetery in the world in terms of area.
Tour
On Saturday, visitors were shown around the cemetery and were able to view the new visitor center. That will be officially opened on Sunday during a meeting for about two hundred relatives.
A spokesman for the cemetery was pleased with the number of visitors on Saturday. “It went really well. Fortunately it stayed dry!”
Visitor Center
The cemetery is visited annually by about 40,000 visitors. The central starting point for these people is the visitor center. Not only has this been renovated, a multimedia exhibition will also be opened in the new center on Sunday. On Saturday, people could already view the exhibition, which tells the history of the cemetery and offers the opportunity to discover the stories behind the crosses.
Through all kinds of visualisations, visitors get a unique insight into the German side of the Second World War in the Netherlands, according to the Friends van Ysselsteyn foundation. Together with, among others, the German embassy, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, the province of Limburg and sponsors were able to build the new visitor center.
Database
The exhibition has an extensive database in which it is possible to search for fallen soldiers and their life stories, to which photos, documents and other personal items are linked.
Most of the buried persons are German soldiers who performed their military service during the war. But there are also members of the SS, war criminals, Dutch collaborators and volunteers of the Wehrmacht from other countries.