Route against oblivion

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Memorial plaque, station at the Erkelenz Jewish cemetery

The route against forgetting in Erkelenz ( Heinsberg district ) is a reminder of the National Socialist tyranny.

Emergence

In 2006 a group of schoolchildren took part in a “Denk (at) tag” competition organized by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung . Your work contributed to the culture of remembrance . A route with twelve locations, the so-called stations, was to commemorate the National Socialist crimes and commemorate the victims in the city area . The result of their work led to an Internet presence. With this, the students won 2nd place in the competition. Now the students wanted to put their virtual idea into practice. The group made a call to interested citizens to cooperate. The result was that bronze commemorative plaques, mostly on a brick base, were attached to the 12 stations. The boards have a short text.

opening

The route was opened on November 9th, 2008 with a ceremony in the old town hall. The guest of honor was Leah Thorn from London, her mother Hannelore Leyens fled to England in 1939 on a Kindertransport . Gerald Leyens from London, a brother of Hannelore Leyens, was invited to the presentation of the commemorative plaque in Schwanenberg on March 7, 2010. The station in Hetzerath was opened on May 16, 2010 in the presence of Leah Floh, chairwoman of the Mönchengladbach Jewish community and Wilfried Johnen from the regional association of Jewish communities in North Rhine-Westphalia .

course

Most of the stations are in the city center and can therefore be easily reached on foot. There are four stations in three villages. A bicycle tour is ideal here, it has a length of approx. 24 kilometers. Guided tours of the route can be ordered for groups at the office of the Erkelenzer Lande Heimatverein .

Stations

  • Old cemetery (Erkelenz) . An honorary grave commemorates six Soviet forced laborers . Former concentration camp prisoner Joseph Hahn is buried in the only crypt in the cemetery .
  • Jewish cemetery (Erkelenz) , Neusserstraße. The cemetery was devastated during the Nazi era .
  • Former synagogue , Patersgasse. The synagogue was desecrated in the November pogrom of 1938 .
  • Jewish cemetery (Schwanenberg) . The tombstones were destroyed and removed during the Nazi era.
  • Spießhof in Hetzerath . On April 1, 1941, the remaining Jews who still lived in the Erkelenz district had to move into this building (" Judenhaus "). On March 22, 1942, 25 Jews were deported to Izbica , what was then the General Government of Poland. A Jew was in Majdanek murdered, the other in the Belzec extermination camp . The last three Jews from Spiesshof were deported on March 31, 1942 to the Villa Buth Jewish house in Jülich - Kirchberg and later to the Theresienstadt concentration camp .
  • Rhenish Fire Brigade Museum in Lövenich. This station is reminiscent of the synchronization of the volunteer fire brigades . The fire chief from Katzem Josef Vaehsen had to give up his office in October 1933. The French prisoner of war Leon Serres was killed during fire fighting in Venrath on August 31, 1943.
  • Johannismarkt. In 1933 the square was named Adolf Hitler Platz. The “ Brown House ”, the party headquarters of the local NSDAP , was also located here in the early 1930s . The station is a reminder of the coordination of clubs and professional associations.
  • House Spiess in Erkelenz. Formerly a private house, today there are parliamentary groups from various parties. The station is reminiscent of the political system of that time. The center had always been the strongest political force in the Erkelenz district, even in the last Reichstag election on March 5, 1933. Between March and July 1933, 117 supporters of the SPD and KPD were arrested.
  • Former high school on the South Promenade. Before 1933 the school was dominated by Catholicism. The humanistic educational goals were gradually abolished. The grammar school was run by new national socialist school directors. In Erkelenz the Konvikt of the Catholic order Oblates of St. Franz von Sales , whose pupils attended high school, were massively harassed. The Konvikt had to close. Josef Eickels from Wegberg had to leave school shortly before his Abitur in 1935 because his father Matthias Eickes was considered a staunch Catholic. Jewish students were expelled from school. Alfred Weinberg was happy when he became a student of Jawne in Cologne in 1937 ; at last he had found the school atmosphere in Erkelenz unbearable.
  • Former publishing house of the Erkelenzer Kreisblatt , Brückstrasse No. 29. Until 1944, the publisher and central politician Joseph Hahn tried to keep reporting in his newspaper despite pressure from the local NSDAP.
  • Martin Luther Platz at the Evangelical Church. The station commemorates the resistance of the churches, which was supported by the Catholic Church in Erkelenz. The presbytery of the Evangelical Church had joined the German Christians . Pastor Keller later resigned from his office to take on a party position in the NSDAP. Only a few people like the presbyter Heinrich Conrady joined the Confessing Church . The Catholic Church was under constant surveillance. Bernhard Hubert Berwitt, pastor of Venrath , was imprisoned from April 9th ​​to 30th, 1942 because of a statement from the pulpit in Aachen. 11 priests from the deaneries of Erkelenz and Wegberg were brought before the special court of Düsseldorf and the Reichsgericht Leipzig for prohibited listening to hostile radio stations . Heinrich Florenz from Gerderhahn was sentenced to 3 years in prison. Heinrich Beulen from Gerderath received 1 year in prison. Robert Hortmanns from Golkrath was acquitted. Gottfried Plaum from Klinkum , Wegberg received the maximum sentence when he was 6 years in prison. The priest and savior of the Jews Joseph Emonds comes from Terheeg and is buried in the Roermonder Strasse cemetery.
  • Old Town Hall (Erkelenz) . This station commemorates the resistance of democratic politicians, some of these people are presented below: The former member of the Holzweiler municipal council , the farmer Peter Mertens (SPD) died in the concentration camp . Jack Schiefer (SPD) worked in the resistance and received a prison sentence. Joseph Hahn and Reinhold Klügel (both in the center) were arrested, the latter surprisingly released on the same day. Joseph Hahn, on the other hand, was a prisoner in the Cologne Messehalle subcamp.

Events

Since 2011, the working group has held a commemorative event in Erkelenz on January 27 to commemorate the victims of National Socialism . On this day in 1945 the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated by the Red Army. The members read the names of all murdered Jewish people who lived in the area of ​​the city of Erkelenz on tape in a recording studio . On that day, these names are read out on the market square next to the old town hall from sunrise to sunset with the help of a sound recording in an endless loop over loudspeakers.

In 2014, on the anniversary of the assassination attempt on Hitler, a bike tour was carried out along the route of oblivion .

More victims

  • Werner Müller , the technical director and partner of the drilling equipment factory Alfred Wirth & Co. KG in Erkelenz (popularly known as Bohr ), was sentenced to death in 1943 by the “ People's Court ”. In a second trial in 1944 this sentence was commuted to a prison sentence. He survived and returned to Erkelenz.

Publications

  • Route against oblivion - Erkelenz remembers. 2nd ext. Ed. Home club of the country Erkelenzer e. V., Erkelenz 2011.
  • In 2014 a flyer with the same title was published, which contains a small map.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mario Emonds: Erkelenz in the Third Reich. RP online , October 8, 2008, accessed December 27, 2014 .
  2. ↑ Erkelenz: "Route against forgetting" - memorial plaque at the Jewish cemetery in ... (No longer available online.) Pressemeldung-nrw, March 1, 2010, archived from the original on December 28, 2014 ; accessed on December 27, 2014 . 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pressemeldung-nrw.de
  3. ↑ Brown Wegberg? Edited by the project course history Maximilian Kolbe Gymnasium, Wegberg 2012, p. 71.
  4. ^ Hubert Rütten: Jewish life in the former district . Erkelenz 2008, pp. 233-234.
  5. ↑ Hans Josef Broich, Günter Wild: Evangelical in the Erkelenzer. 100 years Evangelical Church in Erkelenz. Erkelenz 2003, p. 102 ff.
  6. ↑ Pfarrarchiv Venrath, pastor Berwitt: parish chronicle
  7. ↑ National Socialism in the Heinsberg district. Heinsberg 2010, pp. 113-114.
  8. ↑ hans-dieter-arntz.de
  9. ↑ Y. Michal Bodemann: The double memory. taz , November 8, 2008.
  10. ↑ Elke Wild: International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust. Church in the Diocese of Aachen , November 25, 2014, accessed on December 27, 2014 .
  11. ↑ "Route against oblivion": Storms rattle the tour. In: Aachener Zeitung . August 11, 2014, accessed December 27, 2014 .