The German War Graves Commission, the Volksbund, reburied the remains of German soldiers who died in World War II, including the millionth war casualty, at the Aukštieji Šančiai military cemetery in Kaunas on Tuesday.
According to the Volksbund, the one-millionth German soldier has been identified as Max Beyreuther, a military medic who was killed at the age of 31 near Kelmė in western Lithuania in October 1944.
Beyreuther was laid to rest at the Kaunas military cemetery 80 years after his death. He was reburied alongside 78 other fallen soldiers. Five of them have been identified so far: Wilhelm Bellwied, Johannes Heist, Kurt Hermann Kiesling, Ludwig Laugel, and Karl Schmucker.
Beyreuther, from what is now Saxony-Anhalt, was drafted into the Wehrmacht in April 1943 and served in the 5th Company of the 1st Panzer Reconnaissance, Reserve and Training Division.
According to the Volksbund, the organisation was informed about Beyreuther's grave by Adolfina Šležienė, whose father found and buried him with two other soldiers in 1944, and whose Lithuanian family had been looking after the grave for almost 80 years. The German soldier was exhumed in September last year.
The Volksbund says that between 12,000 and 15,000 people are reburied every year. The organisation cares for around 2.8 million graves in 46 countries.
Around 20,000 German soldiers died in Lithuania during the Second World War. Some 17,300 have been identified and buried in more than 2,000 graves throughout the country.
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