Honouring Esther. The Walk in Germany. 4 & 5 February 2016

admin on October 12, 2015

The February 2016 walk will follow the actual route from slave labour camp to Belsen. Walking 71 years to the day,  4 February 1945, when Esther and a group of women trudged the road to Belsen, many to their deaths on the way or in that last horror.  Esther survived and in the walk we seek not only to remember that experience and those who did not survive but to connect and bear witness to all those who are walking for survival across Europe now.

The artists are currently connecting with the twinning associations in Hannover and Braunschweig. Lorna Brunstein is now in direct contact with Annette Wienecke, whose 1996 book, “Besondere Vorkommnisse nicht bekannt”: Zwangsarbeiter in unterirdischen Rustungebetrieben: wie ein Heidedorf kriegswichtig wurde [An unknown special event, Forced Labour Workers in an Underground Armaments Factory: How a Heath Village Prepared for War] provides considerable information on the second world war history of Hambuhren-Ovelgönne including this line drawing of the route of the march.

map

Herbert Obenaus, Der Todesmarsch der hannoverschen KZ-Häftlinge zum KZ Bergen-Belsen, in: Rainer Fröbe u.a. , Konzentrationslager in Hannover, Bd. II, S. 493-518. referenced in Wienecke 1996 p166. Sketch map drawn by Timo Wolf, Stedden.

The caption reads: On the way past forests, villages and a school. The route taken by the evacuated Concentration Camp prisoners to Bergen-Belsen. The crosses mark the sites where prisoners were buried.

The walk aims to connect with the spirit of internationalism and human dignity that comes through Esther’s testimony rooted in her Bundist upbringing. The artists are reaching out to discover the spirit of resistance and the small brave acts of human kindness that enabled survival. This closing phase of the project reaches out to second and third generation survivors, liberators, perpetrators and witnesses as well as those more recently exiled and dispossessed by war and prejudice.

If you would like to join the walk on 4 and 5 February in Germany, or can support it in anyway please get in touch. The artists are particularly keen to network with those who are supporting refugees in the Lower Saxony now.

Exhibition in Bath

admin on July 16, 2015

The exhibition of work from the Somerset walk is currently up and running in central Bath. In the first exhibition room we have curated a series of 10 panels using research and documentation from the walk. In the glass box there are ‘relics’ gathered by the walkers and in the alcove, the notebooks they kept on the walk.

Rm1 entry wide

The second room show a series of floor pieces. Each room has its own looped audio ambience forming a randomised mix of bird song, trudging feet and comments recorded on the walk. These sounds mix with the voices of tourists and their guides, buskers, abbey bells and city seagulls calls filtering in the open door. A unique audio experience in each room. Every hour on the hour the exhibition sound is silenced by the call of the shofar and the sound of one of the interventions is played as a memorial candle burns momentarily. At the end of the intervention the sounds return and the air is briefly tainted with the smell of burning.

rm2 done 5

An orchid blooms in the darkness, a resonance of the orchid farm supposedly operating from the site of the Waldeslust slave labour camp.

rm2 done

The light from the projection reflects into the installation room. A series of short films representing the experience of the walk are projected across the hall disappearing along the wall out to the door. Sometimes it seems like a walker has dissolved out of the film and into the world and sometimes it seems that an exhibition visitor disappears into the film. Across the digital divide.

projection walk down

On the corner of Abbey Street we look out on the Abbey, the Roman Baths and the ceaseless ebb and flow of tourists. This week is Bath Spa University Graduation week, students in gowns and proud parents getting their souvenir shots in front of Bath’s historic architecture. Strange and powerful juxtapositions.

The exhibition runs at 44 AD Gallery, Abbey Street, Bath until Sunday 19 July at 16.00

 

Forced Walks Honouring Esther: The Exhibition

admin on June 7, 2015

Preparations underway now for the exhibition at 44 AD Gallery Bath.

4 Abbey Street Bath BA1 1 NN 13-19 July 12.00-18.00Forced Walks leafletRW

Documentation from the walk

Installation. New work.

Performance.

Performing the 10 interventions over a two days cycle: one every hour, on the hour through the day. 

Evening viewing and private view Tuesday 14 July 18.30 to 20.30

In/different places Thursday 16 July 18.30 -20.30 Screening and conversation

We hope to screen: The Birch Grove by Alan Marcus alongside some other work as a start to a conversation about memory and place. Our starting point will be Alan Marcus’s film and the media work we have produced based on the experience of  April walk.  We very much hope walkers will join and share thoughts from their experience

Szmul Zygelbojm

admin on May 14, 2015

Never let it be said that the Allies did not know what the Nazis were up to or in fact that the British themselves did not know…..
Szmul_Zygielbojm    Szmul Zygelbojm a senior Bund official was assisted by supporters to escape Poland after the Nazi occupation. He arrived in London in 1942 and became a member of the National Council of the Polish Government in Exile. He worked tirelessly to raise awareness of what was happening in his home country, including speaking to the Labour Party, publishing a booklet in English and broadcasting on the BBC in June 1942. In April 1943 despite heroic resistance the Warsaw Ghetto was liquidated by the Nazis, those killed included Zygelbojm’s family. In May that year he wrote this letter:

SAMUEL ZYGELBOJM’S LETTER OF FAREWELL TO THE POLISH GOVERNMENT-IN-EXILE, MAY 1943

With these, my last words, I address myself to you, the Polish Government, the Polish people, the Allied Governments and their peoples, and the conscience of the world.

News recently received from Poland informs us that the Germans are exterminating with unheard-of savagery the remaining Jews in that country. Behind the walls of the Ghetto is taking place today the last act of a tragedy which has no parallel in the history of the human race. The responsibility for this crime- the assassination of the Jewish population in Poland-rests above all on the murderers themselves, but falls indirectly upon the whole human race, on the Allies and their governments, who so far have taken no firm steps to put a stop to these crimes. By their indifference to the killing of millions of hapless men, to the massacre of women and children, these countries have become accomplices of the assassins.

Furthermore, I must state that the Polish Government, although it has done a great deal to influence world public opinion, has not taken adequate measures to counter this atrocity which is taking place today in Poland.

Of the three and a half million Polish Jews (to whom must be added the 700,000 deported from the other countries) in April, 1943, there remained alive not more than 300,000 Jews according to news received from the head of the Bund organization and supplied by government representatives. And the extermination continues.

I cannot remain silent. I cannot live while the rest of the Jewish people in Poland, whom I represent, continue to be liquidated.

My companions of the Warsaw Ghetto fell in a last heroic battle with their weapons in their hands. I did not have the honor to die with them but I belong to them and to their common grave.

Let my death be an energetic cry of protest against the indifference of the world which wit nesses the extermination of the Jewish people without taking any steps to prevent it. In our day and age human life is of little value; having failed to achieve success in my life, I hope that my death may jolt the indifference of those who, perhaps even in this extreme moment, could save the Jews who are still alive in Poland.

My life belongs to my people in Poland and that is why I am sacrificing it for them. May the handful of people who will survive out of the millions of Polish Jews achieve liberation in a world of liberty and socialist justice together with the Polish people.

I think that there will be a free Poland and that it is possible to achieve a world of justice. I am certain that the President of the Republic and the head of the government will pass on my words to all concerned. I am sure that the Polish Government will hasten to adopt the necessary political measures and will come to the aid of those who are still alive.

I take my leave of all those who have been dear to me and whom I have loved.

Samuel Zygelbojm

http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=ivKVLcMVIsG&b=476155

Opening comments from the Mayor of Frome

admin on April 18, 2015

Peter Macfadyen has kindly agreed to allow us to share the notes for the comments he made at the start of the walk in Frome on April 14:

Mayor ofr Frome

Peter Macfadyen, Mayor of Bath.
Wearing ‘Amnesty’ Chain of Office

Forced Walks

Peter Macfadyen…Mayor Welcome to Frome and C&G.

I’m going to start us of by saying something about walking and something about inhumanity

As Mayor I spent time with a chap climbing Kilimanjaro who was in Frome a few weeks ago. So what, lots of people of that… he’s is walking to Kenya from here, part fundraising and part considering his place on the planet.

Another Frome friend is currently walking 600 miles of SW Coastal paths with his brother – entitled Black Dog Walks – again a mix of fundraising and reflection on his own and the mental health challenges of others….

Annabelle has been conducting Universe Walks near here – 1000 steps tracing the story of the Universe…. Doing this has helped me better see how incredibly recent humankind is….

Understanding we are only early in the design phase as a species perhaps makes it easier to understand these lapses when we turn upon ourselves in the most horrific acts of self destruction? And, as we start this walk, 70 years since the staggering inhumanity of Belsen I am very aware that while that was a peak of horror, it was not a one off…..

Indeed there is a constant level of terrible cruelty, then every now and then something especially inhuman..  Except, as I say, it seems such things are not ‘inhuman’ in the sense that they are part of who we are.

I came to Frome to work for an organisation supporting the rights of disabled people including in Rwanda where I spent some time. Shortly after, the Rwandese genocide saw the disabled people’s organisation leader orchestrate the slaughter of his fellow members, before being killed later in revenge. This is the closest I personally have come to the knife edge between neighbourliness and slaughter.

Part of this project is to look at how trauma in one generation impacts upon another, so I need to mention Alice Seeley Harris (who spent many years in Frome and whose husband and daughter are buried in the Dissenters cemetery).

Alice was an extraordinary Victorian who as the wife of a missionary travelled to the Belgian Congo (not far south of Rwanda) and, appalled by the horrors inflicted upon slaves there, took photos and – carrying them back to Britain – campaigned so vigorously that her message was a key part in bringing to an end Belgian rule there. She founded the Anti Slavery and Aboriginal Protection Society – a precursor to Amnesty.

And that takes me to this my Amnesty inspired Mayoral Chain.  This chain was made to bring focus on the local Amnesty group’s letter writing campaign. Letters written in support of individuals often subjected to terrible cruelty because of their stand for freedom.

As we set off in a moment, on a glorious Spring day, through land recently brought by the community to keep it forever as meadows, I wish this project well……. and perhaps this focus on one act of monumental cruelty will help us better understand humankind’s capacity for enacting the unthinkable.