The cemetery of Axis POWs in Lublino.

   Lublino Cemetery is a cemetery in the southeastern administrative district of Moscow. It was founded in 1635. The area of the cemetery is 19 hectares. Old Lublino Cemetery, as shown on a topographic map of Moscow and the surrounding area in 1931, was demolished. Now there are blocks of flats on that place inside the boundaries of  Krasnodonskaya, Sportivnaya and Taganrog Streets.  

    During 1945-1949, about 600 prisoners of war who fought against the Soviet Union during the great Patriotic War were buried at the Lublino cemetery.

   According to official statistics of the Office for Prisoners of War and Interned of the Ministry of internal Affairs of the USSR of October 12, 1959, 2,389,560 German soldiers were taken prisoner, and 356,678 of them died in captivity. Mortality in the first years of the war was especially high. Even Soviet citizens starved, not to speak about enemy POWs.  Due to the severe cold, poor clothing and poor nutrition, many prisoners, also exhausted by prolonged marches, died just on the way to the POW camps. Despite the individual acts of revenge and lynching of some German POWs, Soviets treated them much better after the war than the Germans treated Soviet prisoners of war. Representatives of the international Red Cross were allowed to meet with them, and many could receive letters from home. On January 1, 1942 the number of German prisoners of war in the USSR numbered only 9,147. For the first time, a significant number of German soldiers were captured, in the battle of Stalingrad. During the war, the labor of prisoners of war had little effect on the economy of the country.  It became a significant factor only after the war.  Prisoners of war participated in restoration of the national economy destroyed during the war — plants, dams, the railroads, ports and etc. They were also actively used in the restoration of the old, and the construction of new, housing in many cities of the USSR. The work of German prisoners of war, in particular, was involved in the construction of the famous Moscow skyscrapers, including the main building of Moscow State University. In addition, the captured Germans were actively used in logging, in the construction of roads and Railways in remote and inaccessible areas, and in the mining of minerals, such as uranium, coal, and iron ore.

       According to the Central Financial Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, during the period of 1943 to 1 January 1950, prisoners of war worked 1.077.564.200 man-days, earning 16.723.628 thousand rubles, and did the work in the construction and  industry with a total value of about 50 billion rubles. Most captured Germans were released before 1950. In October 1955, after the visit of German Chancellor K. Adenauer, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a Decree "on early release and repatriation of German prisoners of war convicted for war crimes", and more than 14,000 German prisoners of war were repatriated from the USSR. In total, about two million German prisoners of war were repatriated from the Soviet Union. 

 In this cemetery are 600 prisoners of war--former soldiers of the countries who fought against the Soviet Union during the war. Most of the graves are German, but there are also Hungarians, Romanians, and even Japanese. In 1995, the cemetery was reconstructed at the expense of German War Graves Commission.

   This is what a cemetery looks like. Neat rows of the same type, granite crosses contrasting strikingly with the Russian graves around.

  Here lies Hungarian.

 Monument to Romanian prisoners of war who died in the USSR.

   Stones with the list of settlements having burials of German prisoners of war in Russian and German.

 A stele without any inscriptions.

Next to the German cemetery, there are Russian soldiers buried.

Many thanks to Gary McMaster for correction of this text.