Lens-Sallaumines Kriegsgräberstätte – German War Cemetery

Historical Information (Source: Volksbund)

15,648 war casualties of the First World War rest on this war cemetery. 15,646 Germans, 2 former Soviet Union

 

The German military cemetery Lens-Sallaumines was created by the German troops in autumn 1914. He soon received the designation "Lorettofriedhof" or "Friedhof des XIV. (Bad.) Army Corps", because in the course of the fighting for the dominant Loretto height - north of Arras - the German soldiers from this area were mostly buried in Lens. In addition, the fallen from the combat area around Lens have come over the years. In 1917 and 1918, an Allied artillery fire almost completely destroyed the cemetery. The French military authorities reconstructed and rebuilt the cemetery after the war. At the same time, 39 provisional graves were dismantled and the dead transferred to Lens-Sallaumines.

 

One of the youngest soldiers of the First World War, Paul Mauck, also rests here today. He volunteered for war when he was just 14 years old and moved to the bathroom. Inf. Reg. 113 and fell, not yet fifteen, on June 7, 1915. He rests in grave 11/268. The dead belonged to troops, the peace garrisons of which were largely in Baden, but also in Bavaria, Württemberg, Thuringia, Hesse, Westphalia, Saxony, Brandenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Silesia, East and West Prussia and in the Rhineland .