The grounds of St. Paul’s Cemetery are home to the burial site of 225 infants and toddlers of predominantly Eastern European nationalities who died between 1943 and the end of the war in the nearby “Entbindungsheim Kiesgrube” (maternity home (near the) gravel pit, see PLACE 62). Their parents had been forced to do heavy labour in Dresden and the surrounding greater Dresden area; both in large-scale industry and medium-sized enterprises as well as in agriculture and private households.

In the winter of 1943/44 young Belarus Maria Sachartschuk got pregnant. Together with her husband, Nikolaj Sachartschuk, she had been deployed to and housed at a factory in Kreischa near Dresden. The local doctor determined 15 March 1944 as the due date. However, on account of the heavy labour, which even the pregnant forced labourers were not exempt from, labour already started prematurely on 5 January. The young woman was transported all by herself on the open back of a truck to the barracks of the maternity hospital on the northern outskirts of Dresden. That is where her daughter Karolina was born the very same day.

Only eight weeks later, on 6 March 1944, the little girl died. The child’s death was reported to the registry office in Klotzsche on 8 March 1944, with the death certificate recording “congenital debility” as the cause of death. On 10 March Karolina Sachartschuk was buried on St. Paul’s Cemetery in an anonymous common grave. In March 1944 alone, 17 more children next to Karolina died under the primitive conditions of the barracks.

Nikolaj Sachartschuk kept hoping in vain until the liberation on 8 May 1945 to see his young wife again. She has been missing without a trace.

Marked on 24 November 2013