Death March Memorial in the Belower Forest
 Memorial stele |
|
| Data | |
|---|---|
| place | Wittstock / Dosse |
| Art | |
| opening | 1975 |
| operator | |
| Website | |
| ISIL | DE-MUS-429916 |
The death march memorial in the Belower Forest for the victims of the death march of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp is located in a forest area in the Brandenburg town of Wittstock / Dosse on the border with Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . The branch of the Sachsenhausen Memorial is sponsored by the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation .
history
Around 18,000 prisoners from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp were camped on the death march from April 23 to 29, 1945 in the Belower Wald, the city forest of Wittstock. Female inmates from the Ravensbrück concentration camp were also housed in a nearby barn . A suspected mass grave in the forest with around 400 dead has not yet been found.
In 1965 a memorial stone was erected at the historic site. In 1975 a memorial with a stele and a place for large events was inaugurated . In the course of the construction of the memorial, the memorial stone was moved to Alt Daber from 1965 . In 1981 the Museum of the Death March was opened as a branch of the Sachsenhausen National Memorial and Memorial . The historic shepherd's house with side room and barns had been demolished for the new museum building. The exhibition was revised in 1992 and supplemented with objects from prisoners' possession that had been recovered in the forest. Circular paths on the approximately 20 hectare historical forest area lead to some of over 100 trees with inscriptions from prisoners.
The museum building was badly damaged in a right-wing extremist arson attack in 2002 . In 2010 the memorial was reopened after an extensive redesign that focused on the historic forest area.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Death March Memorial in the Belower Forest. Brandenburg Memorials Foundation , accessed on April 19, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Federal Agency for Civic Education (ed.): Memorials for the victims of National Socialism . A documentation. Volume II: Federal states of Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, Thuringia . Bonn 2000, ISBN 3-89331-391-5 , entry Wittstock / Dosse , p. 369-370 ( bpb.de [PDF; 23.9 MB ]).
Coordinates: 53 ° 15 '20.1 " N , 12 ° 28' 3.3" E