German Military Cemetery of Costermano

Since 1969, more than 22,000 German soldiers have been buried in the collective cemetery of Costermano sul Garda, managed by the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (Association for German War Graves). The cemetery consists of three terraced fields where stone slabs mark the graves. A path leads visitors through the graves to the top of the hill, where there stands an eight-metre-tall steel cross and a stone altar. A ceramic map marks the 1,654 locations throughout the thirty-seven provinces of northern Italy from which the bodies were transferred.

In 1988, the German Consul General Manfred Steinkühler declared that he would not lay a wreath on Germany’s day of national mourning unless the remains of three Aktion Reinhardte SS Officers responsible for the extermination of the Jews were removed from the cemetery. The names of the three murdered officers were erased from the cemetery’s book of honour and their ranks removed from the gravestones.