Ch 6-3 Fate of German cemeteries

Later back home I wondered why we couldn’t find even a trace of any of the old village cemeteries, especially considering the old big Catholic cemetery in town. It remained intact and in use. Was it religion or revenge or a combination of the two that determined which cemetery survived?

Over the years rumors circulated among displaced East Prussians about what was done to the old German cemeteries. I thought about these rumors which claimed Lithuanians dug up graves ravaging the corpses for jewels and gold fillings. Maybe some post war grave robbing took place. The post war years had a totally abandoned and desperate population here so I wouldn’t be surprised if opportunists did resort to grave robbing due to their circumstances on top of hatred of Germans.  But I could never have imagined what actually happened in these cemeteries.

My internet research found a publication specifically about the cemeteries of East Prussia.  The Annaberger Annalen is a yearbook of Lithuanian and German-Lithuanian relationships.  Dr. Martynas Purvinas writes in great detail about the destruction of the cemeteries in Memelland after 1944, using eyewitness accounts. Purvinas maintains that unique to this area is the evolution of a Baltic death cult interwoven with Lutheran practices. Instead of one central cemetery, some cities had several cemeteries so that cemeteries could be located closer to the individual families who could actively maintain the grave plots. Some of the families went so far as to keep burial sites in the courtyard of their house and that way kept ancestors a part of their daily lives. People weren't buried at the farm around my mother's villages; one cemetery for each village was enough, unless someone was secretly burying people behind the barn, but it was hard to do anything in such tight village settings without your neighbors knowing.

After October 1944 all these traditions, including old Baltic practices, were destroyed and cemeteries vandalized. Perhaps more so than in other Soviet occupied areas, Klein Litauen (Memelland) presented an unusual combination of anti-German feeling, anti-Christian sentiment coupled with a need for revenge on both the part of the Lithuanians and the Russians. However Lithuanians are Catholics which is the religion of the country today. The cemeteries, full of all the heavy symbolism and taboos regarding death and desecration, resurrection, traditional burial practices, lure of riches beneath the ground, offered an opportunity to truly destroy the ancestors of a vanquished enemy. This is a familiar theme throughout history, something very primal to desecrate the dead of one’s enemies. And this they did.

In order to stop major flooding of the Memel River, the Soviet authorities needed to raise the damn at Kaukehmen. The material they used to do this was easily found in the big, still in use, cemeteries in Kaukehmen. An eyewitness recounts how everywhere lay rotted body parts and at the damn were a variety of grave contents piled up sticking out of the dirt. 

The authorities also found plenty of other uses for the cemeteries. Road construction was a pressing need, which is what was done with the cemetery in Gruenheide. Problem was, when you drove along this street you heard the wheels cracking the bones and in the ditches you could see human skulls laying about.

Some of the vandalism did fall to the local inhabitants.  As a result of shortages on construction material they pilfered the metal fences and grave markers to use on their farms.  Others stole anything that might be of value to sell – good granite and marble lay around for the taking. And then there were the actual graves, the bodies and what lay with them. Grave robbers looked for jewels, gold teeth, anything with a potential a resale value. They dumped out the bodies and plundered the coffins. Maybe it is good that the forest now covers what once was the old cemetery of Gnieballen.  Perhaps what remains now lies there in peace, reclaimed, never again to be disturbed.

These tactics of abolishing cemeteries not only served to destroy and cleanse the land of previous inhabitants, but was a warning to the current liberated citizens. The Soviets were atheists, but it is right to say that as a result this made them more brutal say than the Spanish Inquisition, or the Puritans burnings witches in Salem, Massachusetts? The degree of brutality or savagery is rather irrelevant. However it is rather a unique approach to ethnic cleansing by getting rid of those already dead. Genocide continues today but not with reports of disinterring the dead. It perplexes me, this act of taking out vengeance on bodies long dead. More than anything it violates a long-standing taboo regarding corpses, for whatever reason – disease, smell, religious resurrection, ghosts.

Yet there is something else about these cemeteries that puzzles me, something relating to the current day.  So many Germans go back, so many want to reclaim their land, so many have formed these pseudo political organizations to take back lost lands.  Do none of them want to ‘rebury’ the dead? Is there no one to even gather the bones in an act of respect for ancestors, burying the past in a deeper sense?

It is striking, in retrospect, that not all the local cemeteries are destroyed. Prior to the war the Jewish cemetery was destroyed by Germans; a plaque now marks the site. But throughout the area it is clear specific cemeteries were targeted for destruction. The effort was not directed at all sites. British and American graves at the POW camp are undisturbed graves; the bodies of Catholics in the city are safe. However all traces of German Lutherans are gone.  The only acknowledgement they receive is from the wind blowing over bones scattered among the heather.