End-of-year newsletter
Circulaire de fin d´année 2024
Dear survivors, relatives and friends,
I am delighted that we are able to report on our work this year in this newsletter and share some thoughts and plans with you. When writing this letter, however, I found it difficult to find a starting point. Russia's ongoing war against Ukraine since 2022, the strengthening of authoritarian regimes worldwide, Hamas' attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the subsequent war in the Gaza Strip are a burden on all of us and our work at the foundation. Socio-political conflicts have also intensified in Germany. The success of right-wing extremist parties and groups is worrying and jeopardises our diverse cultural and memorial landscape; and not only that: they endanger the foundations of our free democratic order based on human dignity, diversity and equal rights. It is one of the fundamental tasks of historical memorials and places of remembrance to oppose all anti-Semitic and historical revisionist endeavours and to stand up for the unrestricted validity of human rights.
That is why we are grateful - and I actually wanted to start with this - that we have many people like you at our side as companions, project partners and well-wishers. Many people are concerned about our democracy. We can also feel this in the enormous demand for our travelling exhibition ‘Right-wing violence in Hamburg after 1945’, which we showed in Hamburg City Hall in January 2024 and subsequently at ten other locations. The exhibition has met with great interest - it has already had over 10,000 visitors and will be shown at six more locations.
A digital map (www.rechtegewalt-hamburg.de) with background and information on the crime scenes and those involved in the offences is available. It was developed together with the Research Centre for Contemporary History in the ‘HAMREA (Hamburg on the Right)’ project.
It was a great gift not only for us as a foundation, but also for many guests of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial that the concentration camp survivors Livia Fränkel, Dita Kraus, Helga Melmed and Barbara Piotrowska, some of them with their relatives, came to us on the occasion of the commemoration of the 79th anniversary of the end of the war and the liberation of the concentration camps. Once again, they took the time to talk to many young people in eyewitness interviews and at a storytelling café. We also welcomed many relatives of prisoners of the Neuengamme concentration camp and delegations from organisations on commemorative trips. The commemorations in Belgium, France and the Netherlands to mark the 80th anniversaries of the raids in Murat, Meensel-Kiezegem and Putten, in which representatives of the Foundation were able to take part, were also impressive.
The Hamburg memorial initiatives came together for an initial networking meeting in June and discussed future plans. These were lively and motivating encounters, for which we would like to thank everyone involved once again.
We would like to thank all employees who have left our foundation this year for their work, some of which lasted many years, and we would also like to extend a warm welcome to all those who have joined us. I would like to take this opportunity to say a special farewell to Hanno Billerbeck, who provided wonderful support for our work as a representative of the parish office for church memorial work for twelve years and who was succeeded by Martin Zerrath as the new memorial pastor in September 2024.
International connections played a major role in our educational programmes this year: we discussed the topic of ‘Remembering Nazi crimes in times of international legal pressure’ at the ‘10th Future of Remembrance Forum’ in November and at the international youth work camp with people from eleven countries in the summer.
We have expanded our educational programmes in many ways this year: Within a very short space of time, the Stadthaus Remembrance Site has become firmly established in Hamburg's memorial landscape for events and educational programmes and is very well attended. Several associations have already presented their work, positions and demands on the city's culture of remembrance in the ‘project showcase’ there. The ‘What voice do we have?’ project aims to involve relatives of victims of Nazi persecution more closely in the Foundation's remembrance and educational work at its various locations. We accompanied the European Football Championship in Hamburg with a multilingual educational programme. We now also offer inclusive programmes under the motto ‘Museum to touch’.
At denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof in May, we welcomed Else Baker, a survivor of the deportations from Hamburg to Auschwitz, and also presented an open-air exhibition with historical and contemporary photographs of the Hamburg collection points of the deportations. The German-English exhibition brochure ‘...without any hope of return’ is available online on our homepage.
We expanded our research in 2024. I would like to draw your attention to two books published in our foundation's publication series - the anthology ‘Im Zugriff von Fürsorge und Polizei. Erfahrungen sozialrassistischer Verfolgung im Nationalsozialismus’ and the monograph ’Eingezeichnet. Drawings and eyewitness accounts from Ravensbrück and Neuengamme’. Current research is focussing on the topic of ‘Hamburg's cultural landscape under National Socialism’ - this is to be presented in a town hall exhibition in 2026. A major study is being conducted on the Neuengamme concentration camp infirmary. Some of the results will later be incorporated into a very large project that we are currently preparing: We would like to modernise three of our permanent exhibitions and renovate six of the 20 remaining buildings of the former concentration camp.
With the Digital Remembrance Game ‘Remember. The Children of Bullenhuser Damm’, we have broken new ground. The search for clues to the murder of children at Bullenhuser Damm in the form of a computer game is primarily intended for use in schools. It is available on the Bullenhuser Damm Memorial website.
As we have observed, the topic of ‘art and remembrance’ is becoming more important in the culture of remembrance. We also realised several art projects in 2024: After 22 February, the second anniversary of Russia's attack on Ukraine, we exhibited drawings made by artists from Kharkiv based on memoirs by three prisoners from Ukraine. From August to December, Sława Harasymowicz, an artist and relative of a Polish prisoner of conscience, set up a multimedia installation in the Klinkerwerk. And, as every year, schoolchildren realised a temporary work of art in the former crime room on Bullenhuser Damm in memory of the 20 Jewish children murdered there. It was opened as part of the commemorative events on 20 April.
This year, however, we unfortunately had to say goodbye to many people close to us. We remember the concentration camp survivors and contemporary witnesses Rola Sochaczewska, Salomon Birenbaum, Cornelis Feenstra, Louis Malziev, Eva Smolková-Keulemansová, Anton Rudnjew, Natan Grossmann and Lidiia Turovskaja. We recently received the news that our long-time companion Prof Dr Habbo Knoch, Chairman of our Foundation's Expert Committee, passed away unexpectedly at the age of 55. We mourn with all the relatives of the deceased.
On behalf of all our employees, I wish you all a safe and sound start to the new year 2025 and that we can look forward to peaceful times!
Prof. Dr. Oliver von Wrochem, Hamburg, december 2024