Originally opened in 1909 as a graveyard for the poor and indigent of Berlin’s eastern suburbs, this garden-style cemetery soon became the final resting place for many who paid the ultimate price during the wars and revolutions of the 20th century. While the park still serves the burial needs of local residents, much of the cemetery ground is devoted to diverse, and sometimes contradictory memorials to the victims of Central European history.

Those with monuments and places of honor in the cemetery include German soldiers killed in the First World War, Fritz and Albert Gast (two communist sailors killed by rightists in 1919), twenty Polish women killed while serving as forced laborers for the Nazis, 3,330 Berliners killed in the WWII Allied bombing campaigns, Sinti and Roma victims of Nazi extermination policies, 125 Soviet soldiers killed fighting against the Axis powers, Italian soldiers fallen while fighting for the Axis powers, and German postwar victims of the Stalin regime.

History makes strange bedfellows indeed.