Information panel about the GDR border regime displacing the Sophien Parish Cemetery graves, Berlin Wall, Bernauer Strasse
When the Wall was built in 1961 a section on Bernauer Strasse, near Bergstrasse, divided the cemetery of the Church of St Sophia (Sophienfriedhof). The information panel reads: 'The GDR border regime gradually displaced the Sophien Parish Cemetery and its graves. On the instigation of the border troops and the East Berlin district of Mitte, beginning in 1962, numerous graves were exhumed and reburied elsewhere, after which the grounds were levelled to make room for the border fortifications. Two mass graves and a field of single graves containing bomb victims from late 1943 were also affected. Members of the Jaschkowitz family, residing at Rosenthaler Strasse 19, including two Jewish men, were also buried here. Because the men were married to non-Jewish women, they had been shielded for a time from deportation and murder.' An aerial photograph of the Sophien Parish Cemetery, near the end of the war in 1944, accompanies the information. The grave field, created during the war, is marked in red.
Size: 2301px × 5341px
Location: Sophien Friedhof, Berlin Wall, Bernauer Strasse at Bergstrasse, Berlin, Germany
Photo credit: © robert harrison / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: aerial, bergstrasse, berlin, bernauer, bomb, border, brown, cemetery, cold, division, east, fortifications, german-english, germany, graves, history, information, language, metal, monochrome, multi-lingual, panel, parish, photograph, political, portrait, sophien, sophienfriedhof, strasse, strip, victims, wall, war
