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Resting place

May 29, 2010

Construction work on a gas pipeline in eastern Germany has revealed the remains of soldiers missing in action during World War II.

https://p.dw.com/p/Nbna
A shovel excavator levelling the ground and running through a blossming yellow rape field
The OPAL gas pipeline runs across German WWII battlefieldsImage: DW

On a grey Thursday morning in May, rain-laden clouds were lying low over Buckow, situated on the edges of the Oder river valley, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) east of Berlin.

When I arrived there, Erwin Kowalke was just donning rubber boots and a green parka, telling me to hurry because rain would make digging a tedious job. The 68-year-old was hastily packing a spade, a yardstick and a metal detector onto his pickup truck.

Five crosses and the caption "Work for Peace" in seven languages were emblazoned on the door of the vehicle - the logo and motto of the "Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge," the German humanitarian organization where Kowalke works and which is responsible for finding and indentifying missing German soldiers.

On the evening before, Kowalke had gotten a call from a team of ammunitions experts in charge of clearing a route for a Russian gas pipeline to be built in the region.

"They've found bones," he said while we were heading towards Halbe, a town southeast of Berlin. "They say it could be a soldier because there are also pieces of a uniform."

Later on the journey, he added: "You know, a Russian Field Marshall from the 18th century once said that a war wasn't over until the last fallen soldiers had been properly buried. I believe there's much truth in this."

Killing fields

The battlefield of Halbe won notoriety in the dying days of Hitler's Third Reich as about 30,000 Germans and 20,000 Russians lost their lives in one of the bloodiest battles of World War Two. In April, 1945, the German 9th Army tried to break out of a pocket it had been pushed into as Soviet troops advanced towards Berlin.

Two German Wehrmacht soldiers with machine guns in a trench
The waning days of Hitler's Third Reich saw some of the bloodiest fightingImage: dpa

At the time, most of the casualties on both sides were simply left in the trenches and bomb craters, hastily covered with soil to prevent the outbreak of diseases.

All in all, some 60,000 soldiers are thought to be still lying somewhere in the fertile ground of the Oder river valley.

These days some of them are being unearthed as WINGAS, a joint venture between German gas group Wintershall and the Russian Gazprom corporation, builds the OPAL pipeline through eastern Germany.

"Respect for those unknown soldiers has moved us to provide funding for the Volksbund organization so that each one of them gets a final place of rest in dignity," said Gerhard Koenig, the CEO of WINGAS.

Who is he?

Outside of Halbe, a 35-meter-wide lane had been clear-cut of trees and brushwood, and was carefully scanned with metal detectors by an ammunitions disposal crew.

A small cardboard coffin containing the remains of a fallen Russian soldier
The identity of this Russian soldier will remain unknown foreverImage: DW

In a hole about two meters wide lay the bones they had found. A large thigh bone, half of a skull, the lower jar with teeth, and two bones from the soldier's upper arms.

Kowalke started to dig out the brownish, wet remains, and a bit later held one of the thigh bones up to his yardstick, estimating that the man must have been around 30 years old at the time of his death, and about 1.76 meters (5'9") tall.

"Must have been a Russian soldier because of of the state of his teeth," he said while examining the jaw, explaining that the the teeth were somewhat worn on the chewing surface because the Russians usually ate a diet of grains and rice.

"Germans often had amalgam fillings, something you won't find at all in Red Army soldiers," he added.

Kowalke's voice turns low as he held up the skull explaining the soldier "must have been killed by an artillery shell," as the skull bore “strong marks of being virtually ripped open."

He also found the rest of a leather belt with a Red Army buckle near the skeleton, as well as the rusted of a rifle and a few rounds of ammunition.

"Unfortunately, it's impossible to find out who he was," Kowalke said while placing the bones in a black cardboard coffin, the size of three shoe boxes.

"The only way to identify him would have been a military medal with a personal number on it, but he doesn't have one with him," he said, adding: "The chances for German soldiers to be identified are much better because all of them were wearing identity tags."

Agency of hope

For the past 65 years, a sprawling red-brick building in the Berlin district of Reinickendorf has become a point of hope for Germans looking for family members lost in World War Two.

A former Wehrmacht idendity disk and a file of former Wehrmacht soldier Martin K. laid out on a table
His identity tag and military documents helped disclose the fate of Martin KImage: DW

The building houses the so-called Wehrmacht Inquiry Agency (WASt), a government agency in charge of keeping the personal files of about 18 million Germans once drafted to serve in Hitler's army.

There I met Wolfgang Remmers, a senior staff member, who was poring over an oval brass disk, slightly bigger than a box of matches, and some sheets of paper. They concerned one of Erwin Kowalke's most recent findings.

“Personal number is 1421, and he was first drafted to the Wehrmacht's 191st Infantry Reserve Battalion,” Remmers read from the worn piece of metal.

He then looked up an old folder with yellowed pages on which the words "Identity Tag Register" were written in old German type. There he found the number of the soldier's personal file and where to find it in the agency's huge archives.

“His name is Martin K., and his infantry company was last posted to Stettin, which is today the town of Szczecin in Poland,” he said less than half an hour later. The information made sense, he added, because the town of Lietzen in the Oder valley, where the soldier had been found a few weeks ago, would fit because K.'s unit was known to have retreated to the area in view of the advancing Red Army.

Two shelves full of military documents at the Wehrmacht Inquiry Agency
The WASt archives contain a wealth of information about Germany's World War Two-era soldiersImage: DW

The WASt staff would now have to find the wife or any other relatives of Martin K., Remmers explained, whose last registered address was also included in the file.

Since the end of World War Two, the 280 employees of WASt have so been able to clear up the fates of 3.2 million German soldiers categorized as missing in combat after the war.

Yet about 1.2 million former soldiers are still unaccounted for. Most of them were presumed to be lying in the huge and largely unexplored war cemeteries of eastern Europe and Russia, Remmers said.

Eternal peace

With plates with the names of fallen German soldiers at the Lietzen War Cemetery
Some 2,152 German soldiers lie buried at the Lietzen War CemeteryImage: DW

Martin K. will most likely find his final place of rest in the Lietzen war cemetery, one of three cemeteries for former Wehrmacht soldiers in the region. The unknown Russian soldier would be buried in Lebus, a war cemetery reserved for former Red Army soldiers, said Kowalke.

While he was showing me around the thousands of graves at Lietzen, he said most families would prefer their dead to be buried in these special war cemeteries.

“Unlike in ordinary cemeteries, where graves will be removed after a period of 25 years or so, German law ensures that war graves remain where they are forever,” he said.

Kowalke has been doing this job for more than three decades. During that time he has unearthed the remains of about 20,000 war dead, he said. Last year the Volksbund had called him back from retirement to give him a new contract until this summer to help oversee construction on the OPAL pipeline.

Three black cardboard coffins with flowers on top of them in grave
Burial ceremonies for German soldiers are held at Lietzen twice a yearImage: DW

Kowalke's successor is Joachim Kozlowski, a 37-year-old former paramedic.

“It's important that the thousands of soldiers still missing are not forgotten because their relatives need places where they can mourn their dead,” he said.

These days Kozlowski is often in contact with the authorities in Poland, Ukraine and Russia to identify the thousands of German soldiers still lying unidentified in the war cemeteries there.

He admitted that some of his motivation to do the job was also very personal.

“The two brothers of my mother are still missing somewhere along the former Eastern Front,” he said. "I can't describe what it would mean to my family if I could bring Uncle Kurt and Uncle Max home one day.”

Author: Uwe Hessler
Editor: Kyle James