German War Cemetery Ysselsteyn

Below you will find the database of all war casualties who found their final resting place at the German War Cemetery in Ysselsteyn. The database contains approximately 34,000 names, including those who in all likelihood were buried at Ysselsteyn as unknown soldiers.

You can search by last name, first name, rank, date or location. When searching by date, use dots as separators. For an exact date, enter the same date in both ‘From’ and ‘To’ (for example 05.03.1888). For an entire year, enter 01.01.1944 in ‘From’ and 31.12.1944 in ‘To’. You can also combine multiple search fields for a more targeted search, for example name and date of death.

By clicking the Info button you will be automatically redirected to the corresponding Find A Grave memorial page, where in many cases more information can be found. If you need additional information about a war casualty, please do not hesitate to contact us.

*The location of the 1st (field) grave does not necessarily correspond to the place of death.

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History of the German War Cemetery Ysselsteyn

The collective cemetery for German war victims was made available on a provisional, free-of-charge basis for a maximum period of three years at the end of 1946. The intention was to transfer the graves to Germany at a later stage, based on a peace treaty with Germany yet to be concluded. However, such a peace treaty between the Netherlands and Germany was never signed. The formal state of war between the two countries was not ended until 26 July 1951.

Although there are various cemeteries in the Netherlands where German war victims have found their final resting place, most were reburied after the Second World War — when they were still scattered across cemeteries and field graves throughout the Netherlands — at the German War Cemetery Ysselsteyn. Because approximately 2,500 missing German soldiers are still buried in anonymous graves in the Netherlands and human remains are regularly discovered, the number of war casualties buried at the cemetery continues to grow.

With an area of approximately 28 hectares, the German War Cemetery Ysselsteyn is the largest German war cemetery in the world by surface area. This refers exclusively to the size of the cemetery grounds. Measured by the number of war casualties buried, the German War Cemetery in Lommel (Belgium) is larger. There, more than 39,000 war casualties rest on a site of approximately 16 hectares. Exact figures for Ysselsteyn cannot be established. This is due in part to occasionally incomplete records, the approximately 237 war casualties who were later transferred to other cemeteries in Europe, the 18 empty In Memoriam graves, and the possibility that several prominent Dutch collaborators were buried anonymously.

Ysselsteyn is the resting place primarily of German military personnel, persons who served in German military or administrative service, and a small number of civilian victims of various nationalities. Among them are also women and children, including evacuees from the former Camp Vught. Although most graves are marked with a Latin cross, the cemetery also contains approximately 73 collective graves for two or more deceased. These are often marked with an upright or flat gravestone.

Of the approximately 31,714 war casualties resting at Ysselsteyn (as of August 2018), 87 date from the First World War, of whom eight are unknown. The remaining 31,627 were killed during or as a result of the Second World War; of these, 4,861 are unknown. Some confusion may arise in our database on this point, as we have also included the names of 2,669 war casualties who could not be identified with certainty at the time and were therefore buried as unknown soldiers.

Although the majority of the war casualties fell or died in the Netherlands during the Second World War, Ysselsteyn is also the burial site of approximately 3,075 German soldiers who were killed during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge. They were initially buried by the American Graves Registration Service at the American cemetery in Margraten and were also transferred to Ysselsteyn at the end of 1946.

On Friday, 27 June 1952, the now completed cemetery was officially opened. The German Consul in the Netherlands performed the opening ceremony with a wreath-laying, after which the cemetery was opened to the public.

Although we have an extensive archive of original documents, we have chosen to keep the history on this page concise. For a comprehensive and detailed overview, we refer you to the book “Duits beheer over Nederlands erfgoed“, in which the origins and the often painful history of the world’s largest German war cemetery by surface area are described in detail.