Soviet War Cemetery Leusden
The Soviet War Cemetery Leusden is a cemetery in Leusden, neighboring the Amersfoort city cemetery Rusthof. 865 Soviet World War II victims are buried here.
101 Soviet soldiers
This field of honor is, among other things, the final resting place of 101 Soviet soldiers, who were captured on the Eastern Front in September 1941. These soldiers were mainly from the Central Asian Soviet republics, such as Uzbekistan. They are buried near Amersfoort because the Germans had transferred them by train to the Amersfoort concentration camp (in the municipality of Leusden) in 1941. Within five months, 24 inmates died of starvation, the other 77 were shot on April 9, 1942 without any form of trial. At the execution site behind the former police school is a memorial pillar. These soldiers were reburied in the Amersfoort Rusthof cemetery.
Relocation of the war cemetery
Due to lack of space, a new cemetery was set up immediately next to this cemetery in the municipality of Leusden, specifically for these victims from the Soviet Union. This cemetery opened in 1948. The 101 victims were then reburied. Subsequently, this cemetery became a war cemetery for all Soviet victims of the Second World War who were previously buried elsewhere in the Netherlands. Among them, the 691 prisoners of war buried in the American cemetery in Margraten, forced laborers from the Soviet Union who were employed in Germany, and a number of Red Army soldiers who had served in the German army. Many of these victims died of exhaustion or disease shortly after their liberation by the Allies.
Investigation
Journalist Remco Reiding, who lived near the cemetery, was surprised that it was never visited by relatives. He decided to find the relatives of the former Soviet Union. His first trip to the former Soviet Union followed in 1998. On April 22, 2000 he published his findings in the local newspaper Amersfoortse Courant. Moreover, it was now clear that 50 Red Army soldiers were in German service when they perished, while they had been honored and remembered as Allies for all those years. Fourteen anonymous graves were named, and 150 families of victims were found. In 2000, Dimitri and Pyotr Botenko were the first relatives to be informed of the location of their father's Vladimir Botenko grave. In April 2012, the book about the investigations "Kind van een Ereveld" was published. Reiding has lived in Moscow where he became a correspondent for various Dutch media. Currently (2021) he is director of the Leusden Soviet War Cemetery Foundation.
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