Ettersberg Cemetery

Buried at Ettersberg Cemetery are the remains of the 400 people who died from the effects of imprisonment after the camp was liberated. They were buried here between April and June 1945 in rows of graves marked with their names. A tomb holds ashes from urns that were stored by the SS in the former Bismarck Tower formerly located above the graves.

On the slightly sloping hillside of the upper Ettersberg, isolated trees stand between several rows of flower beds. Behind them the bell tower of the memorial site. — The Ettersberg Cemetery is in the center of the memorial complex. It borders on Freedom Square and is surrounded by the entire complex, 2022. Photo: Lukas Severin Damm. ©Buchenwald Memorial

The cemetery was neglected in the late 1940s, and the names of the dead faded and were lost. Many of the bodies were reinterred during the construction of the National GDR Memorial in 1956 to create the space planned for large-scale events in front of the bell tower, and the cemetery then took on its current form.

During the restorations of 1996, new research enabled the names of the dead to be displayed on the rows of graves. In 1997, ashes from over 700 urns discovered during the restoration of the roof of the crematorium were interred here, as were bone remains donated from the collection of the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin in 2004.