Burials at the cemetery were drastically reduced after Hitler's forced transfer, under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, of tens of thousands of Baltic Germans from Latvia in late 1939 to occupied areas in western Poland.

Burials at the cemetery continued on a much smaller scale until 1944, principally among those Baltic Germans who had refused Hitler's call to leave the region.

In 1967 or 1969 the city council decided to bulldoze large sections of the cemetery in order to transform it into a public memorial park.

In the 1970s, the architectural ensemble of the Great Cemetery Garden, together with the buildings, was included in the List of State Protected Monuments of the Latvian SSR.

After long discussions, in 2000 , the Finance Committee of the Riga City Council decided to allocate 13,262 LVL from the city reserve fund for the arrangement of the gravestone warehouse on Varoņu Street - for inventory, survey and evaluation, as well as for moving and paying for transportation work, as the warehouse contained approximately 14,000 gravestones, including those of historical and artistic value.

In December 2023, an international design competition was publicized by the Latvian Association of Architects to "get creative ideas and proposals on how to respectfully preserve the burials of the Great Cemetery.

In view of this, developing and improving the Great Cemetery is a very difficult topic, and with the competition, we hope to find creative and respectful solutions.