TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A piece of land located in the area of Megamendung in the Bogor Regency is currently subject to conflict between state plantation holding PTPN and local land cultivators over legal right to cultivate (HGU) permit. Not many know that the land that had been nationalized by the government since 1958 is allegedly the final resting place of German nazi soldiers.

Asked about the graveyard of the alleged Nazis, a local resident, Iwan Maulana, said on February 3, “No one knows since when [they were buried here] but each year large groups of Germans pay visit to this place.”

According to Iwan, the graveyard known locally as the ‘German cemetery’ is located in the bottom of Mount Pangrango in Sukaresi Village, Megamendung. There are visually 10 graves with the typical Nazi symbols with two bigger ones in the western area.

According to local stories, Iwan said that the German soldiers had died at the area as there is a monument erected at the entrance of the cemetery and is written Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof or a memorial for the fallen German soldiers, so Iwan says.

Another resident Tempo interviewed, Agus Mawardi, claims that the cemetery had existed in the location since Indonesia’s independence and claims that there were two German nationals in 1926 that had purchased the field there to be turned into a tea farm and used the area to bury the dead Germans during the war with the Dutch.

Mahfuzulloh Al Murtadho