Böddeken Military Cemetery
The Böddeken Military Cemetery is a military cemetery in the East Westphalian town of Büren in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The cemetery is located in the “Valley of Peace” southwest of the Meinolfus Chapel in the Wewelsburg district. The Wewelsburg is four kilometers away to the northwest.
At the beginning of 1945, towards the end of the Second World War, there were brief, heavy battles in this area between troops of the Wehrmacht, Volkssturm and Waffen-SS and the US Army. The German troops tried to prevent the encirclement the Ruhr.
The cemetery was inaugurated in August 1953 on the initiative of the German War Graves Commission. 472 fallen soldiers are buried here, some of whom were reburied from other cemeteries. Others were reburied from graves outside cemeteries, where they were buried in early 1945. During the exhumation, many previously unknown dead people were identified. Among the dead are three Dutchmen who were members of the Waffen-SS. There are also 13 dead from the First World War in the cemetery. The valley was renamed “Valley of Peace”.
On November 1, 1978, a memorial for the victims of National Socialism and the war was inaugurated in the memorial. In Wewelsburg, many people died in the Niederhagen concentration camp. That is why this memorial by the sculptor Josef Rikus from Paderborn is also known as the Wewelsburg Memorial. The memorial consists of five stones made of Anröchter dolomite. The first stone bears the inscription “In memory of the victims of war and tyranny”. The other stones commemorate the victims of the so-called Kristallnacht, the escape and expulsion, the bombing campaign and the concentration camps.
Visit
The Böddeken military cemetery is open during daytime hours.
