SORGHOF, Germany -- Annually, on the weekend after All Saints' Day, a group of 50 citizens from this Bavarian village board a bus and travel through Rose Barracks onto the Grafenwoehr Training Area.
The group -- which consists largely of septuagenarians -- disembarks a few kilometers into the installation and climbs up a forested path to the centuries-old Haag Cemetery.
These unusual visitors are former townsfolk and descendents of past residents of Haag, one of 57 villages and hamlets liquidated by the Third Reich in 1938 and 1939; the German government cleared out these residents to expand the training area prior to World War II.
This action uprooted 3,500 people from land their families had lived for generations. As the residents left, they dismantled their homes and buildings stone-by-stone, carrying the materials with them. When they resettled in nearby Sorghof, Vilseck and Schlicht, the same stones were used to build their new homes.
Now, the only physical evidence of Haag's existence is the small, simple cemetery.
Ludwig Walter, the last person born in Haag, described leaving the hamlet as a jarring experience for his family. Through a translator, Walter characterized the relocation as the loss of their collective "Heimat," or "home" and "birthplace."
For Walter and the other visiting families, the annual pilgrimage to the Haag cemetery remains their only connection to their ancestral home.
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