Moorkaten War Cemetery

The war cemetery is the only indication of the existence of the KZ-Außenkommando Kaltenkirchen, which belonged to the Neuengamme concentration camp. This labor camp was from August 1944 to April 1945 at the present Federal Highway 4 at Springhirsch. The task of this external command was to extend the runway of the ME 262 jet airfield on the Kaltenkirchener Heide.The camp averaged about 500 inmates, Russian prisoners of war, Frenchmen, Poles, Dutch, Yugoslavs, Belgians, Italians, Spaniards, Latvians, Moroccans, Algerians and Germans.
The number of dead is only approximate. It is between 500 and 750 prisoners who died of malnutrition, exhaustion and violence.In 1951, 181 individual tombs were identified and 65 French were identified. In two mass graves are about 300 to 400 Soviet prisoners of war buried. Evidence from witnesses suggests that somewhere in this forest area there are still graves with a few hundred dead.The war cemetery Moorkaten was redesigned by participants of two international youth camps of the Volksbund and with the help of the city Kaltenkirchen in the years 1977/78 and handed over on 13 August 1978 in a commemoration of the public.Source: volksbund.de/kriegsgraeberstaette/kaltenkirchen-kieler-strasse.html

As a memorial to the endless number of war dead, such places - usually referred to as "war cemeteries" or "soldiers' cemeteries" - are still very important today. "Now, Lord, let your servant go in peace, as you said." However, the many people buried here were by no means divorced in peace, but became victims of the war and an inhuman tyranny.
The most important and at the same time everlasting function of the soldiers' or honorary cemeteries or war cemeteries is therefore to keep the memory of this suffering alive and – every generation anew (!) – to remind people of the lasting preservation of peace.

a memorial in the middle of the forest, with which the memory will hopefully be preserved