Gardelegen 1945
Memorial Book for the
victims of the massacre
Isenschnibbe Barn
Memorial Gardelegen
Memorial Book for the victims of the massacre
The memorial book of the Gardelegen Memorial contains the names and biographical information of the 287 identified people who were murdered in the Isenschnibbe barn massacre.
On the night of 13 April 1945, SS men, members of the Wehrmacht, the Reich Labour Service, the Volkssturm, and other Nazi organisations murdered 1,016 concentration camp prisoners in a barn just outside the city limits.
Shortly before the arrival of the US Army on 14 April 1945, members of the Volkssturm, the Technical Emergency Aid, and the fire brigade tried to bury the victims in mass graves and conceal all traces of the crime.
Just one day later, on 15 April 1945, soldiers from the 102nd US Infantry Division discovered the hastily abandoned crime site.
Field of Graves
On orders of the US Army, the male population of Gardelegen created a military memorial cemetery to provide a dignified burial site for the 1,016 murder victims.
By the time the cemetery was officially dedicated on 25 April 1945, another seven concentration camp prisoners from city outskirts had also been buried in the cemetery. Therefore, the cemetery has a total of 1023 graves.
The Database
The database is based on current research findings about the Gardelegen massacre’s victims. It contains the current biographical information available on the 287 identified victims and the few survivors.
The listed numbers refer to the prisoner numbers from the Mittelbau-Dora and Neuengamme concentration camps. In some cases, the information refers to the identification tag numbers of Allied prisoners of war.
The most important archives and holdings for this project are:
- Arolsen Archives
- Archives of the Buchenwald, Mittelbau-Dora, Neuengamme und Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorials
- Gardelegen Municipal Archive
- NIOD Amsterdam
- Archive of the French Defence Ministry of Caen
- MyHeritage, Ancestry and others
The filters are provided as an additional service. They allow access to the researched and processed data according to individual interests.
Although we offer extensive data on the following pages, the database does not claim to be exhaustive, especially given the difficult situation regarding sources. The memorial continues to update and expand the data entries regularly.
Filter database
Biographies
The project seeks to create a digital memorial book of the victims of the massacre and to add brief biographical information to the statistical data. The personal life stories and tales of suffering help make those behind the prisoner numbers more visible.
The database includes both those who were murdered and those who survived the massacre. In this way, we hope to highlight the European dimension of the Gardelegen massacre.
More biographies are forthcoming. Hence, we ask that relatives of the survivors and of the murdered as well as interested individuals provide the memorial staff with any additional information or material about these people they may have.
Research
The data provided here does not claim to be exhaustive. In addition to conducting independent research, you can also send an enquiry directly to the Gardelegen Memorial. We are happy to help you learn more about the different fates and experiences of persecution.
Most of the remaining files on victims and survivors are currently held in the Arolsen Archives, the International Center on Nazi Persecution (formerly the International Tracing Service) in Bad Arolsen. You can view, print, and download original documents in the online archive of the Arolsen Archives.