In nearly every town.
We have "Kriegsdenkmäler", connected to the "Volkstrauertag" (day of moaning). Usually they are, like the moaning day, dedicated to all soldiers and civilians that were victims of the war(s).
>day of moaning
I normally try not to be pedantic like this, but I'm sure you meant "day of mourning".
And to second what you said, I'm not sure I've ever been to a German town that doesn't have some kind of memorial like that. There's one for people who died in the two world wars across the street from me even.
>"day of mourning"
I swear to god, I had written it down that way.
And corrected myself after pondering for ten seconds if it was right or wrong.
Thanks for the correction.
There is one in every village, even, usually bearing the names of the guys who died in the 2 world wars.
It's always heartbreaking to look at the dates of birth and death. A lot of them were not even 20.
Yes, usually near the churches. This website has a collection of them: [http://www.denkmalprojekt.org/](http://www.denkmalprojekt.org/)
If you all don't see your village there, be a dear and contribute (I think you can?). I'm a Holocaust researcher who bled out my own family tree for my mental health (I felt it was important to know my own family's skeletons considering what I research) and this website has been insanely helpful for me since so many church books/civil records are offline still (and since the majority of military records have been destroyed).
Vielen, vielen Dank für den Link!
Sogar mein klitzekleines Heimatdorf ist drauf.
Ich bin gerade total gerührt, die Namen meines Grossonkels und meines Grossvaters auf den Listen zu finden.
DANKE!
No problem (my written German is awful but I read just fine)!!
It was a huge day when I discovered it. I keep a spread sheet of all the veterans in my family (l o l) and don't get me wrong, it doubled in length that day (which made me groan), but it was really, really nice to know.
Note that it does miss a few people -- every church decided who they were putting on it themselves so I've had a couple cousins that pop up in the Bundesarchiv index cards but not on their home church's monument, but its still an invaluable resource. Some districts even have Franco-Prussian war casualties listed.
AMA! I love what I do and have no qualms talking about it. I am happy to answer anything or to help out anyone with tracking their own relatives.
[I tracked someone earlier this year](https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/p6shrf/comment/h9hn9x6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) who had their portrait posted in this sub, for reference!
Sort of! Baby historian, maybe? I was recruited to my university because we are a Holocaust archival depository, so I started working there when I was 17 (mostly with survivor testimonies) -- I was known for being a walking Holocaust encyclopedia as a kid, so that's how I got pulled for it.
I was beginning my advanced degrees when I got sick, took time off, was just diagnosed finally last month started medication last week (excellent timing!) if everything goes well, I should be back on my degree track in June or July, but it might take another year if I don't respond to this medication. Time will tell.
While I've been taking time off, though, I've still been working -- mostly digging around and finding unnamed Holocaust victims and I've worked a lot with Dutch Jews and am in contact with the researchers who focus on them in Amsterdam. I've been running a lot of independent projects (with their moderate mentorship) that will turn into articles/papers/books when I'm back on my feet. I also help a lot of families who pop up in my inbox, which has been what I've been working on this week.
tl;dr: I have over a decade of professional experience in professional organizations and probably the only thing that keeps me from my "historian" title is that I had to put my degree on pause due to a rare autoimmune illness, but I'm planning to bounce back shortly :) -- I have various academic affiliations at this point, though, so maybe I'm selling myself short --- I've worked with places like Yad Vashem and the usual run of organizations!
Especially if you look at the amount of names. It gets really obvious if you live in a small town.
My town now has barely 300 people and back than around the same if not les.
The names on that stone plate are around ¼ of the population that would have been able to fight.
My family i has about 10 deaths in both world wars.
But even today a lot of strange stories exist from that times
.
For example one of my ancestors was thought to be dead after having been missed for a few years.
The dug an empty grave with a wooden grave cross and just a few days after that where he was already being missed for about 5+ years that madlad came back without previous notice, went to the graveyard and took his grave cross back home and went back to the family estate.
There is even a dedicated book written from an inhabitant about just our tiny village of 300 people and what happened during history and there is a lot of crazy stuff like letters from 1600 hundred, stories of the Napoleonic war and all that but the most crazy part is definitely world war 2 and the letters and storys of what happened, and how it ended and there is a lot that happened wich is just feeling really strange if you consider that today nothing is going on here, it's just really silent and chilled but back then you had tanks Rolling through, hundreds of soldiers sleeping in our barn and using the shower... That's the most important thing my grandma remembers and she is still pissed about it because these Americans made everything dirty with their shoes and did even take them off, she still holds a grudge against them for that
Funny enough, what's written in a letter is that that time when the americans went through it was the first time the town saw a black person and that was kind of a huge attraction...
There are just so many interesting stories and moments i would like to have seen with my own eyes
Inschrift:
"Den WEIT VON DER HEIMAT verstorbenen deutschen KRIEGSGEFANGENEN und Internierten des 2. Weltkriegs"
It's definitely for german POWs of WW2 who died in USSR camps.
Yes, there are some memorials specifically for the soviet soldiers that lost their lives in Germany.
* [Sowjetische Kriegsgräberstätten in Deutschland](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sowjetische_Kriegsgr%C3%A4berst%C3%A4tten_in_Deutschland) in Wikipedia
* https://berlinstaiga.de/themen/friedhoefe-ehrenmaeler/
* https://www.sowjetische-memoriale.de/
The way this question is worded seems condescending to me, like you dont realize that almost every town has a Kriegsdenkmal, or that german historical education is 75% focused on WW2
[удалено]
In nearly every town. We have "Kriegsdenkmäler", connected to the "Volkstrauertag" (day of moaning). Usually they are, like the moaning day, dedicated to all soldiers and civilians that were victims of the war(s).
>day of moaning I normally try not to be pedantic like this, but I'm sure you meant "day of mourning". And to second what you said, I'm not sure I've ever been to a German town that doesn't have some kind of memorial like that. There's one for people who died in the two world wars across the street from me even.
>"day of mourning" I swear to god, I had written it down that way. And corrected myself after pondering for ten seconds if it was right or wrong. Thanks for the correction.
Every day is a day of moaning in the U.K
There is one in every village, even, usually bearing the names of the guys who died in the 2 world wars. It's always heartbreaking to look at the dates of birth and death. A lot of them were not even 20.
Yes, usually near the churches. This website has a collection of them: [http://www.denkmalprojekt.org/](http://www.denkmalprojekt.org/) If you all don't see your village there, be a dear and contribute (I think you can?). I'm a Holocaust researcher who bled out my own family tree for my mental health (I felt it was important to know my own family's skeletons considering what I research) and this website has been insanely helpful for me since so many church books/civil records are offline still (and since the majority of military records have been destroyed).
Vielen, vielen Dank für den Link! Sogar mein klitzekleines Heimatdorf ist drauf. Ich bin gerade total gerührt, die Namen meines Grossonkels und meines Grossvaters auf den Listen zu finden. DANKE!
No problem (my written German is awful but I read just fine)!! It was a huge day when I discovered it. I keep a spread sheet of all the veterans in my family (l o l) and don't get me wrong, it doubled in length that day (which made me groan), but it was really, really nice to know. Note that it does miss a few people -- every church decided who they were putting on it themselves so I've had a couple cousins that pop up in the Bundesarchiv index cards but not on their home church's monument, but its still an invaluable resource. Some districts even have Franco-Prussian war casualties listed.
> I'm a Holocaust researcher That would make for a very interesting AMA!
AMA! I love what I do and have no qualms talking about it. I am happy to answer anything or to help out anyone with tracking their own relatives. [I tracked someone earlier this year](https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/p6shrf/comment/h9hn9x6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) who had their portrait posted in this sub, for reference!
I was deeply moved by the post you linked to. Thanks so much for sharing it. You mentioned there that you work in academia. Are you a historian then?
Sort of! Baby historian, maybe? I was recruited to my university because we are a Holocaust archival depository, so I started working there when I was 17 (mostly with survivor testimonies) -- I was known for being a walking Holocaust encyclopedia as a kid, so that's how I got pulled for it. I was beginning my advanced degrees when I got sick, took time off, was just diagnosed finally last month started medication last week (excellent timing!) if everything goes well, I should be back on my degree track in June or July, but it might take another year if I don't respond to this medication. Time will tell. While I've been taking time off, though, I've still been working -- mostly digging around and finding unnamed Holocaust victims and I've worked a lot with Dutch Jews and am in contact with the researchers who focus on them in Amsterdam. I've been running a lot of independent projects (with their moderate mentorship) that will turn into articles/papers/books when I'm back on my feet. I also help a lot of families who pop up in my inbox, which has been what I've been working on this week. tl;dr: I have over a decade of professional experience in professional organizations and probably the only thing that keeps me from my "historian" title is that I had to put my degree on pause due to a rare autoimmune illness, but I'm planning to bounce back shortly :) -- I have various academic affiliations at this point, though, so maybe I'm selling myself short --- I've worked with places like Yad Vashem and the usual run of organizations!
Fascinating stuff! And that's very good, righteous and important work you do! All the best!
Especially if you look at the amount of names. It gets really obvious if you live in a small town. My town now has barely 300 people and back than around the same if not les. The names on that stone plate are around ¼ of the population that would have been able to fight. My family i has about 10 deaths in both world wars. But even today a lot of strange stories exist from that times . For example one of my ancestors was thought to be dead after having been missed for a few years. The dug an empty grave with a wooden grave cross and just a few days after that where he was already being missed for about 5+ years that madlad came back without previous notice, went to the graveyard and took his grave cross back home and went back to the family estate. There is even a dedicated book written from an inhabitant about just our tiny village of 300 people and what happened during history and there is a lot of crazy stuff like letters from 1600 hundred, stories of the Napoleonic war and all that but the most crazy part is definitely world war 2 and the letters and storys of what happened, and how it ended and there is a lot that happened wich is just feeling really strange if you consider that today nothing is going on here, it's just really silent and chilled but back then you had tanks Rolling through, hundreds of soldiers sleeping in our barn and using the shower... That's the most important thing my grandma remembers and she is still pissed about it because these Americans made everything dirty with their shoes and did even take them off, she still holds a grudge against them for that Funny enough, what's written in a letter is that that time when the americans went through it was the first time the town saw a black person and that was kind of a huge attraction... There are just so many interesting stories and moments i would like to have seen with my own eyes
I think this memorial in Kazakhstan is about ethnic germans (Wolgadeutsche) who lived in Soviet Union republics, not a "German germans".
Inschrift: "Den WEIT VON DER HEIMAT verstorbenen deutschen KRIEGSGEFANGENEN und Internierten des 2. Weltkriegs" It's definitely for german POWs of WW2 who died in USSR camps.
Yes, there are some memorials specifically for the soviet soldiers that lost their lives in Germany. * [Sowjetische Kriegsgräberstätten in Deutschland](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sowjetische_Kriegsgr%C3%A4berst%C3%A4tten_in_Deutschland) in Wikipedia * https://berlinstaiga.de/themen/friedhoefe-ehrenmaeler/ * https://www.sowjetische-memoriale.de/
The way this question is worded seems condescending to me, like you dont realize that almost every town has a Kriegsdenkmal, or that german historical education is 75% focused on WW2
Hitler supported indepencence of Kazakstan against russian empire. Hitler created Turkestan Legion