Remembering the march to Belsen

admin on February 16, 2015

The March from Waldeslust to Bergen-Belsen

Esther remembers….

We were told that the camp would be disbanded. And we marched. I don’t know whether anyone knew, maybe some, but the destination was Bergen-Belsen. But I remember, during that march, and even during times when I was taken out to work, and seeing little houses, and especially on that march, you know, red-roofed, pretty little houses, it was a very pretty little area where we were. And curtains, windows, lace curtained windows, and people peering out and staring.

And I often wondered what went on in their minds when they saw these so-called people were being marched in their concentration garb, and to me, I remember thinking, my this…the world like that exists? There is another world. That I used to be quite incensed when told after the war that the majority did not know what was going on. I don’t know. I just knew that people looked at us. Maybe they were not aware of everything that went on, but we were certainly in their midst.

I don’t know exactly how long the march lasted. But it was not one of the worst marches, because it did not take weeks. Hanover is quite near Bergen-Belsen.

…from Esther Brunstein’s testimony held at the Imperial War Museum

British Co-Presents and the Holocaust

admin on February 10, 2015

British Co-Presents and the Holocaust :

exploring the changing nature of war memory and Holocaust memory, especially in relation to notions of Britishness

Bath Spa University public lecture at the Holburne Museum, Bath  start at 6pm  Wednesday 13 May approx 1 hour, followed by questions / discussion.

Prof. Tony Kushner (Professor of History and Director of the Parkes Institute for the study of Jewish/non-Jewish relations, University of Southampton)

and

Dr Aimee Bunting (Honorary Fellow of the Parkes Institute and teacher at Godolphin and Latymer School, London) Title: British Co-Presents and the Holocaust

Abstract: We will examine how in the latter stages of the Second World War, British and Commonwealth soldiers became co-presents to the Holocaust. These were the 1500 British prisoners of war who were sent to a sub-camp of the Auschwitz complex from late 1943, and those who were involved in the liberation of Bergen Belsen in April 1945. By focusing on some key individuals, including the actor Dirk Bogarde, we will analyse how they wrote and re-wrote their traumatic experiences of these infamous camps. It is a paper that explores the changing nature of war memory and Holocaust memory, especially in relation to notions of Britishness.

Recce for Honouring Esther

admin on February 3, 2015

I did a complete walk of the proposed route today almost 70 years to the day when Esther was forced on her march from the slave labour camp to Belsen. It was cold and there was a sharp wind but I just keep thinking how this was nothing to compare with what she experienced. I was well fed, I had had a nice breakfast and was armed with plenty of goodies to keep me going.

frosty road

I heard woodpeckers and thought of machine gun fire, I trudged along frozen ground and through small settlement. I was consumed with thoughts about this parallel journey, the one in my head and the one I was walking. I kept thinking about the cold and Charles Wheeler’s newsreel images of Kurdish families at a cold and windswept at a mountain pass in some recent war came to mind.

tree guts

As my body kicked in to remind me I forced myself to run and walk at pace to hear the voices in my head keeping me going. I could slow and relax at will though.

view south east

So for those thinking about actually doing the walk with us…day one is quite a stretch an all day walk including the ‘interventions’ which we can now start planning. Muddy with a couple of steppish climbs and descents. Walking boots definitely and maybe a stick for the slippy bits. All walkers  are asked to register and will receive detailed updates about route and meet points etc

Honouring Esther project live

admin on February 1, 2015

Forced Walks Honouring Esther project was launched as part of a range of commemorative and remembrance activity at Bristol’s M-Shed on Tuesday 27 January the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz death camp, Holocaust Memorial Day. Victims of genocide from Europe to Cambodia from Rwanda to Darfur were remembered. The event was particularly poignant for artist Lorna Brunstein whose mother and father survived the Holocaust and came as refugees to London. The line of the death march Lorna’s mother, Esther, survived is at the core of this project. Lorna is one of the group of second generation survivors lighting the Holocaust memorial candle at the M-Shed.

lighting memorial candles

The harbourside in Bristol was an appropriate place to remember this appalling chapter in the abuse of human rights and vow to continue the long struggle. A plaque on the wall of the M-Shed:

Plaque on M Shed

 

Project launch preparation and local connections

admin on January 25, 2015

I have just given the website a major tidy up hopefully making it a little more self explanatory. We are still short on our funding target and still looking for backers to plug the gap. But the project goes ahead.
Some fascinating local resonance stories coming in which we will report on in more detail as time allows.

In Frome we are looking to make more of a connection with the story of Alice Seeley Harris, born in Frome and an early Human Rights activist. A photographer and missionary and campaigner she did much to expose the genocide taking place in what was then the Belgian Congo at the turn of the 20th Century.

We have had contact from a descendant of soldiers who helped liberate the Belsen death camp. Many of the witness statements for the local war crimes trials were taken by members of the Somerset Light Infantry, so perhaps we will find more descendants and possibly stories of local veterans.

Finally a connection to develop is the news that the walk goes near the burial ground for those who died in the Bath Workhouse. Somerset’s poor dumped in unmarked graves.

Social media links to follow. We hope that the registration booking link for those intending to take part in the walk will be available shortly.

Waldeslust found

admin on January 24, 2015

After much research and with invaluable help from Peter Jackson we have now found what we think is a photograph of the slave labour camp for the Jewish women transported from Auschwitz to Hambuhren-Ovelgonne known as ‘Waldeslust”, the camp where Esther was a prisoner from August 44 until February 45
the slave labour camp

According to Peter the photo was taken in 1951 and was found in a small book about Hambuhren during the war, written by a local resident Rainer Fabisch. Peter says “The Waldeslust photo shows it to be a pleasantly wooded place with no sign of any of the conditions that the camp inmates had to cope with.horrors. It looks a perfectly habitable place and may have been used to house some of the thousands of refugees from what was eastern Germany and became part of Poland after the war”

In Peter Jackson’s book on Hambuhren he describes Waldeslust as

‘one of three sub-camps of Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, some ten miles away. It was built in 1942 and at first housed Russian POW’s, Dutch workers and from February 1944, British and Canadian airmen. Called on some maps the ‘Judenlager’ or ‘Jewish Camp’, it was concealed in woodland on the edge of Ovelgonne on what is now the road from Hambuhren to Oldau. It was surrounded by barbed wire and cut off from the rest of the camps and from the outside world. It had the rather picturesque name of Waldeslust, literally “woodland joy”, and it functioned as a concentration camp from August 1944, when prisoners were being transferred westwards from Auschwitz-Birkenau which was being closed down as the Russians advanced towards it.

The camp lasted for just six months, until February 1945, when it too was closed and its prisoners moved on foot to Belsen.

A two day walk to Bath

admin on January 13, 2015

The Honouring Esther walk is now shaping up well ahead of the launch of the project on January 27, the link up with historian and librarian, Peter Jackson, is generating powerful material informing the walk.

Further research with Esther supported by contact at the Bergen Belsen Memorial Museum indicate that the death march took several days. Esther recalls the feel of the cold frosty ground, it must have been a desperate experience, starved half to death, worked to the point of death and then forced to march in flimsy worn out clothing with no protection against the elements. In winter in Germany. There were deaths along the way.
This map of shows the route of the February 1945 death march. The caption says ‘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’.
map
In consequence we are now planning for a two day walk, beginning in Frome, Somerset on Tuesday 14 April and walking to Hinton Charterhouse, then on Wednesday 15 April walking from Hinton Charterhouse to Combe Down Bath. It looks like there will be approximately 10 points where the actual walk coincides with the symbolic line of the death march, in principle each one of these will be the site of some kind of intervention. Strangely some of the graves marked on the map are almost exactly at points where the actual walk we will do in April cross the symbolic line on the map.

reference: ‘Besondere Vorkommnisse nicht bekannt: Zwangsarbeiter in unterirdischen Rustungebetrieben: wie ein Heidedorf kriegswichtig wurde’.The author is Annette Wienecke, who was a school teacher in Hambuhren and wrote the book in 1998.

Esther’s Walk transposed to Switzerland

admin on October 10, 2014

We have had a request to provide the line of Esther’s walk to a colleague visiting Switzerland during the time that the project will be taking place. Here is the ‘line on the map’ with a destination yet to be finalised.
[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=zG0FerrHE65o.kGgIneoaR1Io&w=640&h=480]