Former Italian cemetery (with Polish and Serbian sections) for Stalag IV-B/Z (Zeithain)

 memorial, Second World War 1939-1945, cemetery

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This was the Italian cemetery connected with the WWII POW camp Stalag IV-B/Z (Zeithain). Over 900 Italian internees were buried here.

There were also a Polish section and a Serbian section. 44 Polish POWs were buried here, as well as about a dozen or twenty Serbs. The graves here were individual and marked, but after the war, under Soviet domination, the area was a tank driving training ground and artillery firing range, and the markers were removed.

In the early 1990s, the Italians were disinterred and repatriated. In 2004, the graves of the Poles and Serbs were located. The remains were transfered to an existing cemetery in the village of Neuburxdorf, a few miles north of here. That cemetery is a municipal cemetery; during WWII it was also used for burials from POW camp Stalag IV-B (Mühlberg).