The hard physical labor and inadequate living conditions led to a steadily increasing mortality rate. Initially, the dead were laid to rest in the municipal and church cemeteries.

In February 1940, the district administrator of Wolfenbüttel ordered the closure of the Hallendorf community cemetery: the area was needed by the Reichswerke "Hermann Göring". In return, they provided a site in the Westerholz forest. The first burials took place there in January 1941.

In April of the same year, the cemetery had to be extended; the new area was named "Westerholz". Forced laborers and later also prisoners of the Drütte concentration camp now found their final resting place here; the majority were deceased from the nearby work education camp (Camp 21). From the summer of 1943, the newly established Jammertal cemetery took over this function as a central "foreigners' cemetery".

The cemetery was closed in 1955 because the groundwater level was too high. The current name "Westerholz Cemetery" refers to the entire cemetery grounds.

Not all of the graves are still there today. A few years after the end of the war, Nazi victims of various nationalities were reburied in their home countries or in Ehrenfeld in other cities.