Stockelsdorf

Photography of the grave during the war
Photography of the grave during the war

In Stockelsdorf, a town located a dozen or so kilometres from Lübeck, he worked as a farm worker for a local farmer. On the 7th of February 1941, a few days after he turned 16, he died tragically, poisoned by carbon monoxide, probably from a leaking furnace, which was used to heat the forced laborers' room. He was buried at the church cemetery. Thanks to the money collected among Polish forced labourers in Stockelsdorf, a tombstone was purchased for him. During the war, his sister was taking care of the grave.

After 70 years, the story of this grave is difficult to trace back and explain. Its existence is evidenced not only by photographs taken during the war, but also by a record in the burial book from the local archive. Both the Evangelical-Lutheran parish church of the municipality of Stockelsdorf and Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. explain the levelling of the grave against the law by the fact that it was not included on the list of war graves. As a result, as a civil tomb, it was levelled in the mid-1960s.