On 1 October 1966, the time had finally come. After five years of exhumation and reconstruction work, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberpflege e. V. opened the Niederbronn-les-Bains War Cemetery.. Over 15,000 German war dead from the Second World War, who had been buried in Alsace, the Moselle department and in some German areas near the border, were reinterred here, and their relatives attended the opening.

This was preceded by a long process: from the Franco-German War Graves Agreement of 1954, through the initial contact between the Volksbund and the municipal administration of Niederbronn-les-Bains, to the first youth camps, which made a significant contribution to the establishment of the cemetery and forged ties with the local population. To present this development in detail, the JBS Niederbronn is planning an exhibition as well as a new educational module—a simulation game in which participants playfully reenact the processes that led to the cemetery’s opening: from the state and municipal levels down to the personal level.

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