Bergen-Belsen working group

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Working Group Bergen-Belsen eV
(AG Bergen-Belsen)
purpose Clarification of Bergen-Belsen as a place of remembrance and warning, research, documentation and meeting
Chair: Elke von Meding
Establishment date: March 1985
Number of members: around 100 (as of March 2016)
Seat : 29303 Lohheide
Website: www.ag-bergen-belsen.de

The Bergen-Belsen Working Group supports the work of the Bergen-Belsen Memorial on a voluntary basis . She advocates that this is a place of warning and a call to humanity and responsibility. The association was founded in March 1985.

Projects

Overview of the grounds of the Bergen-Belsen Memorial
Historic transport wagon and part of the loading ramp in the background
Memorial stone for the victims of the Nazi tyranny who were led from the loading ramp to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Tiles with names from the project "We write your names"
Location of the loading ramp
Site plan of the memorial
and the Soviet cemetery

Lights on the rails

Every year on the Sunday after April 15th, the AG Bergen-Belsen commemorates the liberation of the camp by the British. On the eve of the commemorative event, people who were brought here on the Heidebahn are remembered with "lights on the rails" at the loading ramp . From this place they were driven the six-kilometer way to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp under strict guard .

Memory path

The working group supports the project of youth associations to design this path as a " path of remembrance" . A white line starts at the ramp and ends opposite the former camp entrance. It is planned to provide the path with texts.

At the memorial events, the working group distributes flowers to the participants at the entrance, who can place them in the place of their personal memorial.

Lights on the rails in the "Corona year"

In 2020, the event could not take place as usual due to the corona pandemic. Instead of talking at the car, readings by young people were put online.

Loading ramp

On the left side of the road from Bergen to the Belsen memorial, behind the railway overpass, there is a memorial by Hans-Jürgen Breuste , which reminds of the loading ramp . A footpath leads parallel to the oldest surviving track from 1936 to a wagon. This place was placed under monument protection at the request of the Bergen-Belsen Working Group.

“Not far from the Bergen-Belsen memorial (Celle district), in April 2002, on the initiative of the» Bergen-Belsen Working Group «, an old-style box car was set up next to the ramp on the edge of today's military training area, which was last used by the museum railway in Weyhe - Leeste (Lower Saxony ) came. Its iron skeleton was provided with new boards by soldiers of the Bundeswehr in Bergen-Hohne. The year before, during construction work at the Bergen train station, the military mistakenly tore down part of the loading ramp, which has been listed as a historical monument since September 2000, and had to be restored. "

- Alfred Gottwaldt : The German “cattle wagon” as a symbolic object in concentration camp memorials. In: Memorial Forum. Topography of Terror Foundation, accessed October 10, 2012 .

We write your names

About one kilometer northwest of the memorial, 20,000 Soviet prisoners of war have found their final resting place in the Hörsten prisoner of war cemetery . After 1990, the index cards of all Soviet prisoners of war were found in an archive near Moscow. Students then made brick panels with the names of the victims. The name plaques should be placed on a small wall at the edge of the cemetery. Schools or groups of pupils can participate in the project "We write your names" , which is carried out by the AG together with the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge in Lüneburg.

Search for tracks - save tracks

Youth work camps have been held since 1993 under the motto "Search for traces - secure traces" . The focus was on uncovering and maintenance work on structural remains, which were completed after the memorial was redesigned in 2007. As a new project, the design of the memorial path was started in 2008. Conversations with survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and contemporary witnesses are an essential element in these camps.

Study trips

The Bergen-Belsen group regularly conducts study trips:

  • 2004 to Strasbourg
  • 2008 to Amsterdam
  • 2009 to Prague
  • 2010 after Mittelbau-Dora
  • 2011 to Riga
  • 2012 in the Emslandlager in Esterwegen
  • 2013 to Erfurt
  • 2014 to Budapest
  • 2016 to Krakow and Auschwitz
  • 2017 to Neuengamme
  • 2018 to Warsaw

The reports from the study trips are available on the website of the AG Bergen-Belsen.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ At the beginning of 1985 there was an appeal

    “Call

    for the founding of the Bergen-Belsen Working Group

    40 years ago, over 100,000 people died a painful death in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp from unimaginable suffering. They became victims of the criminal Nazi regime and its accomplices. Many still do not understand how these crimes came about. We are aware that there are many forces “in this our country” who are interested in “finally” forgetting what happened back then. But

    NO
    ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO FORGET
    AND NO
    ONE MUST FORGET
    FOR THE SAKE OF LIFE
    FOR HUMANITY

    That is why we call for the establishment of the Bergen-Belsen working group on Monday, February 11, 1985, 7:00 p.m. in the Sievershausen documentation center, Kirchweg 4.

    This working group should be supported by individuals and groups. We must work to ensure that the Bergen-Belsen Document House is expanded so that groups of visitors can receive an expert introduction to the history of the camp and Hitler's fascism. This also requires the employment of full-time workers. With this, the Bergen-Belsen memorial would perhaps do justice to its assigned task of being the central documentation center in Lower Saxony on Hitler's fascism.
    The content and organizational form of this working group will be discussed and decided jointly on 02/11/85 in Sievershausen.

    Documentation center on war
    events and peace work Sievershausen, Kirchweg 4 - Tel. 05175/3939 (from March 85: 5738) "

    - Flyer : Bergen-Belsen - 60 Years of the Memorial Exhibition from October 1 to November 29, 2012 ( online version )
  2. ^ The clay tablet project of the Albert Liebmann School Hanover
  3. ↑ Erich-Kästner-Realschule Tostedt participates in the campaign "We write your names" ( Memento from October 1st, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ "Returning the dignity." First "Name Brick" project at the Munster secondary school. ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 7.9 MB) In: Heide Kurier of April 25, 2010, p. 3 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.heide-kurier.de
  5. ↑ Study trips of the AG Bergen-Belsen