iDSB at the official memorial service at the military cemetery in Lommel

Eight pupils from classes 10, 11 and 12 presented a poem by Georg Trakl and a peace song at the official ceremony on Sunday, 13.11.2022 in bright sunshine under the direction of Mr Schultze. An estimated two hundred people were present, including the ambassadors from Germany, the Netherlands and Estonia to the Kingdom of Belgium, as well as numerous representatives of the other embassies, various associations, towns in the area and the military, all of whom laid a wreath during the ceremony.

Father Kossmann spoke beforehand in a devotion and at the ceremony and laid a wreath together with the German Catholic Church community in Brussels.

Dr Nozar, President of the Administrative Council and Mr Flohn, Headmaster of the iDSB, accompanied the students.

There are 39,111 fallen soldiers buried in Lommel, mainly from the Second World War, several thousand of them without names. On each of the almost 20,000 crosses, two men are named or inscribed “a German soldier”. The majority of them died in the last months of the Second World War, many of them not much older than 18.