Uncategorized | Forced Walks

A walk in Canada

admin on April 13, 2015

We invited others to take up the model and walk-in-witness with us.

Here an email from Canada, reproduced with permission, from Esther’s nephew Phillip. Esther and her brother Perec were the only two members of their family to survive the Holocaust. Her oldest brother and her father joined the resistance but did not survive. Her mother was killed at Auschwitz. At the weekend Phillip walked the length of the death march Perec was taken on in April 1945.

I feel almost guilty at how pleasant a walk it was. I started from my house and walked four km west and then four back. It is a very nice day and I live in a very nice part of town. I have good shoes and comfortable clothes. I started off properly nourished. It took me under two hours and I felt good when I got home and got to sit down.

Then when I came home I picked up Dad’s memoirs and read about April 10/45 and his walk. Thousands of prisoners walking the same distance, but under guard by the Nazi guards. He doesn’t mention dogs but as I put my own images to his words the guards have vicious dogs to control the marchers. The stragglers are being shot. They are being forced to walk because the railway siding has been destroyed and I imagine signs of destruction all around them. And at the end their destination was the boxcars – the trains of Hell.

So I’m not sure that I really commemorated the event. But thanks to you I took a moment to think about it.

Philip

Alice Seeley Harris and her incorruptible Kodak

admin on April 12, 2015

Interview with her great granddaughter, Rebecca, at the Brutal Exposure exhibition in the International Slavery Museum, Liverpool

[vimeo 85248277 w=500 h=375]

Rebecca Seeley Harris from National Museums Liverpool on Vimeo.

This haunting exhibition presents what was probably the first photographic campaign in support of human rights. It documents the exploitation and brutality experienced by Congolese people under the control of Leopold II of Belgium in the 1900s.

Alice Seeley Harris lived much of her life in Frome. We will remember her work in bring slavery and genocide to the attention of world when we are walking on Tuesday. A local resonance.
The exhibition in Liverpool runs until June 7

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/exhibitions/brutal-exposure/index.aspx

Getting involved

admin on March 31, 2015

Walker registration is now closed but there are still many ways in which you can support the project:

Tuesday 14 April 0930. Come and see us off from the Cheese and Grain in Frome

Wednesday 15 April 13.30 Join us for a short walk from the paupers field at Odd Down, Bath, along footpaths to meet the main walk at Combe Down.
Wednesday 15 April 15.45 Join us for the closing of the walk at the old Jewish Burial Ground at Combe Down, Bath.

Be a driver..we are still short of support drivers
Be a steward.. help steward a section of the walk or one of the stops
Join us online and help spread the word

If you can help please contact us using the form on the front page of the website

….and yes we are still short of cash…..

Walker Registration closing

admin on March 30, 2015

We are on target for recruiting our team of walkers by the end of March. Walker registration closes at the end of the day today. Watch this space for details of a supporting short walk-in-witness for the liberation of Belsen and all victims of genocide and slavery in Bath during the afternoon of Wednesday 15 April.

We still are still looking for stewards, drivers with cars and are desperately short of cash.

Monmouth Rebellion

admin on March 27, 2015

The local resonances surface. The walk crosses another trail in the long struggle for human rights.

The Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 began in Lyme Regis and was crushed in the same year on Sedgemoor. Following a set back at Keynsham the ‘Pitchfork’ army headed east, they were refused entry to Bath and headed for Norton St Phillip. We walk towards their ghosts.

picture credit Geoff Williams.
The George Inn: in 1685, for a few days, the headquarters of Duke of Monmouth

On the throne in 1685, following the death of Charles II, was James II, Charles’ brother, a Roman Catholic. Charles had regained royal power following the collapse of the Commonwealth and quickly dismantled the political and religious freedoms established following the Civil War. Republican ideas were still strong in the country and the accession to the throne of James, was feared by many to be a further drift towards a return to absolute Roman Catholic rule. This was especially true in the West Country, The Duke of Monmouth, Charles II’s bastard son, hoped to lead a Protestant uprising and overthrow James.

Monmouth was supported by republicans as well as those supporting a constituional monarchy. People from Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire joined the rebellion some of them were nonconformist Christians who had suffered persecution under Charles II. Others were disaffected because of the economic recession which had recently hit the south west, most were labourers and artisans. Amongst their number were workers from the mills and workshops of Frome.

At Norton St Philip a further skirmish had this ‘Pitchfork’ army falling back to Frome, possibly along the roads we walk. Ultimately they headed off to Wells and across the Somerset levels towards their last stand at Sedgemoor.

A vicious and terrible repression followed, famously known as the Bloody Assizes, in Wells alone on a single day 500 men were tried and most sentenced to death. 12 executions took place at Norton St Phillip. Frome rebels are reported to have also been hung, drawn and quartered at Gore Hedge, just past the top of what is now Bath Street. Others were transported to the West Indies. The families of the Taunton schoolgirls who had presented a banner to welcome Monmouth had to pay a ransom for their release.

More info here: Monmouth Rebellion and Bloody Assizes

Frome briefings, new stories

admin on March 19, 2015

Productive planning/briefing meeting in Frome this week. Second generation survivors and liberators met: we heard powerful stories of survival and resistance:

A walk across Europe escaping the pogroms over a century ago from Oddesa to Palestine.

The retraced steps across Liverpool Street station of a family whose history begins at the arrival of the Kindertransport train.

Reminders on the network of the legendary yiddish advocate, poet and socialist Meyer Bogdanski.

And today a powerful Kurdish woman tells the story of a life in exile.

Join us for more on the walk, share your stories and lets see how this strange journey in the mind and walk on the ground will speak to us.

Briefing for supporters in Bath, 25 March

admin on March 9, 2015

The project was launched in Bath at a briefing for artist associates at the 44AD Gallery in Bath. We return to update supporters and brief walkers on Wednesday March 25 at 6.30.

Join us on

Wednesday March 25 at 6.30

44AD Gallery, Abbey Street, Bath

Find out the latest on the project from the artists leading it.

Funding success and local briefings in Frome

admin on March 5, 2015

Frome Town Council today confirmed support for the project, amongst other things this will fund local briefings in Frome and a workshop for young people at Frome College.

The briefing for project supporters, prospective walkers and anyone interested in finding out more about the project will be on

Tuesday 17 March at the Cheese and Grain in Frome

Meeting Room 1: 4.00pm

and again

Meeting Room 1 at 6.30pm

We will run the same briefing twice:
- come along and find out more about the project, perhaps you have an appropriate human rights story to contribute?…come and share it
- intersted in walking?…come and find out about what that would involve
…and there are loads of ways in which you can help realise the idea for this project.

Briefing for supporters, Frome Tuesday March 17

admin on March 3, 2015

Join artists Richard White and Lorna Brunstein to hear the story of the Forced Walks project at a briefing in the Cheese and Grain, Frome on Tuesday March 17. The briefing will run twice once at 4.00pm and once at 6.30pm in meeting room 1.

An opportunity to find out about the background to the project and to get involved. There are still places for those wanting to join the walk, come and find out more. The artists are continuing to reach out to local historians and human rights activists interested in being involved in this creative walk-in-witness. They are keen to meet descendants of veterans of the Somerset Light Infantry and other soldiers who may have taken part in the liberation of Belsen as well as those who may have family stories of exile to share.

3000 unmarked graves …. in Bath

admin on February 27, 2015

As we develop the walk new local resonances are surfacing. Historian John Payne tells of the unmarked graves near Bath’s old work house. Discarded people dumped, buried and forgotten in a field. Could these sunset shadowed undulations be the remains of Bath’s poor. Another guilty secret?

Or was I looking the wrong way?

We are still researching and developing content for the walk, keen to hear and share local resonances.