Memorial to the Victims of the Death March - Waldfriedhof - Seefeld in Tirol, Austria
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The memorial to the victims of the Death March of 1945 is located at Waldfriedhof (Forest Cemetery) in Seefeld in Tirol, Austria.
Waymark Code: WMXKBR
Location: Tirol, Austria
Date Posted: 01/23/2018
Views: 3
Waldfriedhof is a cemetery located above the "Römerweg" in the woods of "Föhrenwald". It was established in 1947 as a Jewish cemetery for 63 Jewish concentration camp prisoners who were shot or who died from exhaustion and starvation in the Seefeld area. It later became a general cemetery when the old cemetery around St. Oswald Church was demolished and moved here to enlarge the central square of the village.
It includes individual graves and family burials, a military cemetery and the memorial created in 2016 by artist and architect Michael Prachensky in honor of the prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp who died in the Death March of 1945. The new memorial is made of heavy concrete blocks with the Star of David. It replaced the old cenotaph.
The inscription in German is followed by a Hebrew translation. It reads: "Im gedenken an die opfer des Todesmarsches im fruhjahr 1945"
English: "In memory of the victims of the Death March in the spring of 1945"
History: In April 1945, during the last days of the war, 8,000 prisoners were removed from Dachau and its sub-camps and forced to march to the Bavarian Alps. Some thought they would be part of a Red Cross prisoner exchange. Other prisoners thought the plan was to kill them out of sight of the rapidly advancing U.S. military. It is possible that the Nazis planned to use prisoners to build fortifications in the Tyrolean mountains for a defense of last resort. Whatever the reasons, the German guards forced a brutal pace and thousands of walkers died in a few days. Fortunately, the march never reached its final destination.
The Death March has passed directly through many towns near Dachau, including Allach, Pasing, Graefelfing, Planegg, Krailling, Gauting, Berg, Icking, Wolfratshausen, Geretsried, Bad Toelz, Waakirchen, Fuerstenfeldbruck and Gruenwald. Many walkers literally died at the front doors of citizens. There might have been a temptation to forget this terrible part of local history, but after much discussion and introspection, citizens chose another path.
The cities, led by the mayor and citizens of Gauting, decided to mark the road of the march so that people who will be passing by will know what happened there. A competition was organized and Professor Hubertus von Pilgrim was chosen to create the monuments to the victims of Nazism. The bronze statues were in place in the spring of 1995, in time for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau.
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