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Langenstein, December 2015
Dear Sir or Madam, dear friends, As the year 2015 is drawing to its ends, we would like to wish you well for the new year while looking back at the past one. In the course of this year, we had to say goodbye to the former prisoner Raymond Soulas from France, to Katharina Hilckman, widow of the Zwieberge survivor Anton Hilckman, to Greet Groen, daughter-in-law of Evert Groen, and to Magda Ubaghs, niece of Frans Cobbenhagen. The Dutchmen Evert Groen and Frans Cobbenhagen both lost their lives in Zwieberge. Our sincere sympathy and condolences go to all members of their families. Last year’s events started on 27 January, the nation-wide remembrance day in Germany dedicated to the victims of national-socialism. Pupils from the 5th and 12th grade of the Käthe Kollwitz high school in Halberstadt continued the many years old tradition of older pupils guiding their younger schoolmates across the former concentration camp ground while telling them the history of the camp and of the people who were detained there. Following this, both groups participated in the commemoration and wreath laying ceremony at the six mass graves during which Halberstadt’s first mayor Andreas Henke delivered a commemorative address. The same night, the Memorial and the Moses Mendelssohn Academy of Halberstadt organized a public reading with Renate Sattler. The author and president of the Saxony-Anhalt writers‘ association read excerpts from a chapter of her novel fragment “Risse im Gesicht” (cracks in the face), in which the book’s female protagonist reflects upon a school visit to the Langenstein-Zwieberge memorial in the 1980s.
From 9 April to 13 April, the Memorial hosted the traditional “Days of Encounter” on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Langenstein-Zwieberge concentration camp. The desire of young people from the region to have personal contact with survivors is still very great.
And so, the former inmates Georges Petit from France and Ryszard Kosinski from Poland replied to the numerous questions from the young people, who asked not only questions with respect to the Nazi period and what concentration camp inmates had experienced, but also talked about the fears and worries of young people in the light of current crises in the world. Unfortunately, because of their high age, only very few survivors can still come to testify in these time witness interviews. This is why the Second Generation Group has been taken over more and more from them for the last three years, and they discussed again this year with those young people the concentration camp detention of their fathers and grandfathers as well as the impact of this experience on their families. The public commemoration ceremony on 12 April started with the “Action 2015” based on an idea of the Second Generation Group and featured the subject of the “death march”. This subject had been studied beforehand by young people from the region. For the scenic representation with which the subject was performed, they had put up signposts displaying names of places and distances between them on the roll-call ground of the camp. On the day of the performance, the young people enacted – now with the support of French pupils from the Belfort partner region of the Harz county, the Latvian granddaughter of a camp survivor and the American grandson of a US army liberator – the movement of the prisoners between those stages of the march. In groups or
individually, they moved further and further away from the starting signpost, stopped for a while, marched on or stayed completely behind before returning on different roads to the starting point where they observed a minute’s silence in commemoration of the victims of the “death march”. As a sign of their hope for a world without “fear”, “displacement”, “terror” and “millions of refugees” as a consequence of “greed”, “hatred” and “exploitation”, 70 doves flew across the former roll-call ground at the end.
During the following commemoration ceremony, Georges Petit, a French survivor, André Baud from France representing the Second Generation Group, Noel March, the son of one of the American soldiers who liberated the camp, and Detlef Gürth, president of the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament, pronounced words of remembrance and commemoration. The ceremony was accompanied by music performed by Constanze Jaiser and Jascha Pampuch from Berlin as well as by Noel March and his family.
On 23 April, we participated again in cooperation with the Dachverein Reichenstrasse Quedlinburg association in the “Quedlinburg book spring” with a public reading of extracts from the memories of the Belgian Zwieberge survivor Bernard Klieger “Der Weg, den wir gingen” (The way we marched). This year again, high-school students from the Leipzig Protestant School Centre gave us a hand and carried out maintenance jobs on the Memorial’s external grounds in the context of the “Action Reconciliation – Service for Peace” scheme during the period from 2 to 11 May. On 8 May, the German Trade Union Federation and the German Industrial Unions of metal-workers and construction workers organized in the Memorial a ceremony on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the liberation from national-socialism. Union secretary Reiner Straubing and Prof. Rainer O. Neugebauer from the advisory board of the support association made a speech. The programme was hosted by the lyricist Thorsten Stelzner and the guitar-player Jascha Pampuch. On 30 May, a museum in the Belgian town of Bihain, which is dedicated to the 83rd infantry division of the US army, organized a "Commemoration Day" on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the German concentration camps. Members of the 83rd infantry division not only liberated Bihain during the Second World War but were also the first Americans who set foot on the grounds of the Langenstein-Zwieberge concentration camp on 11 April 1945. Gesine Daifi from the Memorial’s staff participated in this event with family members of former Belgian inmates. On the occasion of the Berlin conference "Remembrance - a controversial issue" on the 9th and 10th of July, the Memorial was given the opportunity to present in detail during a workshop the different aspects of the work of the Second Generation Group. The participants in this workshop asserted that this scheme was almost unique in the nation-wide memorial work and should serve as a model for others.
From 3 September to 16 October, the Memorial hosted the special exhibition "Search for traces. The death marches in the documents of the International Tracing Service (ITS) Bad Arolsen". On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition, members of the Dachverein Reichenstrasse Quedlinburg association read excerpts from the book "The way we marched" by Bernard Klieger, as they had done before at the event of the "Quedlinburg book spring". The Belgian not only survived the camp but also the "death march" which departed from Langenstein-Zwieberge. In the context of the reading series "Writers against right-wing ideas", the Memorial and the writers' association of Saxony-Anhalt invited on 28 October the pupils of the secondary and community school "Hagenberg" of Gernrode to a reading event with Jürgen Jankofsky who read from his book for young people "Novembertau" (November dew), which features questions of violence in everyday (school) life and the role of offenders, victims and followers. The Second Generation Group met from 5 to 8 November for their 18th annual seminar and discussed with senior foundation and memorial staff as well as with representatives of the Support Association future projects and an idea for the “commemoration action 2016”. The collection “Remember!” published by the Memorial Foundation of Saxony-Anhalt was continued this year with two articles on Langenstein-Zwieberge. Under the title “Memories of my father “, Jean-Pierre Valantin reflects on his motivation to discover the history of his father Pierre who survived the Langenstein-Zwieberge concentration camp and others. A second article informs about the annual activities of the international Second Generation Group. In case you are interested in this publication (which is, however, available only in German), please get in touch with the Memorial. Looking ahead The next ”Days of Encounter” will be held from 7 to 11 April 2016. We ask all former prisoners and family members to let us know by 10 January 2016 if they will be our guests. For your attendance message, please get in touch with Gesine Daifi (by email: [email protected], by letter: Gedenkstätte Langenstein-Zwieberge, Vor den Zwiebergen 1, D-38895 Halberstadt OT Langenstein). Finally, let me wish you on behalf of the Memorial’s staff for the coming year 2015 good health, happiness and luck and for us all much more peace in this world. We are looking forward to continuing our cooperation with you and extend our sincere greetings to you.
Dr. Kai Langer acting Director of the Memorial In commemoration of the victims of the Langenstein-Zwieberge concentration camp, more than 100 name plates were again placed on the edge of the mass graves in 2015, bringing the number of human beings whose identity has been restituted to a total of 517. For the manufacture of further name plates, the support association and the memorial request continued donations to the following account of the support association: Name of bank Harzsparkasse Reason for payment Grabplatten IBAN DE 05810 520 000 301 75 1668 BIC Code NOLADE21HRZ
(photos 1-4: archives of the Memorial for the victims of the Langenstein-Zwieberge concentration camp, photos 5-7; 9-11: Martina Lucht, photo 8: Jenny Becker)
