Municipal Cemetery Rusthof Oud-Leusden

The Municipal Cemetery Rusthof in Amersfoort, also known as the general cemetery Rusthof Oud Leusden, was built by the Municipality of Amersfoort but is actually in the Municipality of Leusden. The cemetery contains a great diversity of war victims of various nationalities and wars.

Most war graves date from the Second World War. From this war are also the majority of nationalities; Greeks, Czechs, Dutch (including a Moluccan and an Austrian), Italians, Poles, Yugoslavs, Romanians, an Hungarian and various nationalities from the British Commonwealth, which also filed a Belgian and a Frenchman. Many of these victims were killed in Camp Amersfoort or were transferred from the American cemetery in Margraten, just after it was reorganized after the Second World War.
Part of this cemetery but located separately is the Russian cemetery where 865 Soviet Russians are buried, most of them were transferred after the Second World War from the American cemetery in Margraten.

There are also graves dating back to the First World War, or rather, just after. These are Italians and Portuguese. Presumably they died as a result of the Spanish flu. How they came up here in the Netherlands is unknown.

Very special is also an American war grave from the Vietnam War, which is probably the only American war grave from this war in the Netherlands. The US Air Force airman who is buried here was probably killed by an accident when he was on leave with his Dutch wife.

On the cemetery are also the graves of Christian David van der Linden, who died in Bosnia in 1997, Menno Herbert Adriaen Lodders (Russia, 1992) and of Wolter Gijsbert van Thiel who died in Mali in 2015.

Cemetery Rusthof in Oud-Leusden is the tomb of Former Commander 16th Infantry Regiment Lieutenant Colonel J. Visser.
He died after the war on 17-03-1950 and is buried next to the grave of 1st Lt. A. Vreeken and the monument with the names of those who fell from the 16th Infantry Regiment during World War II.
Lieutenant Colonel J. Fisher wrote the book: "Five days war in the Netherlands, 10-14 May 1940," about the battle of the Grebbeline.

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Source

• Text: TracesOfWar
• Photos: Dick de Bruijne (1), Johan Tjallingii (2)
• DOEKE J. OOSTRA, Gesneuvelden in steen, Penn uitgeverij, Leeuwarden, 2009.