Niederzwehren

The camp was begun around December 1914 and held British and French prisoners captured on the western front. Early in 1915 Russian prisoners from the eastern front also arrived with numbers peaking at around 20,000. The German staff controlling this number probably totalled around 150 men.

The camp operated beyond the armistice of November 1918 and was only finally closed in the summer of 1919.

The cemetery was begun early in 1915 specifically to bury prisoners-of-war. Prisoners were mainly British and French from the western front, but also included some Russian prisoners. By 1919 it contained over 3000 graves, but numbers were reduced mainly due to the French practice of repatriating French victims. The cemetery was formalised by British authorities in 1922 to a design by Sir Robert Lorimer. This included bringing dead prisoners from at least a dozen other smaller camps around Germany as a consolidation exercise. The ground is officially British soil, owned by the British crown.^[1]

The graveyard currently holds 1795 Commonwealth graves from the First World War,^[2] largely those who died of wounds following capture, or from disease within the camp. Notable graves include:

• Julian Royds Gribble VC grave III.F.4
• James Richardson Spensley grave III.H.5

The adjacent Russian War Cemetery contains around 2000 but these are not individually marked and are simply remembered by a Russian cross.^[3]

The Russian cemetery (to one side) contains a relatively rare monument: remembering the 38 guards who died during their duties (mainly during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918).^[4]

51°17′N 9°28′E / 51.283°N 9.467°E / 51.283; 9.467