Local research for the walk in Germany. Thoughts on blood and fear
Winter closes in on refugees crossing Europe, tragic events in Paris and under reported terror attacks elsewhere force us to think about the world we live in and the world we want to live in. In making this walk and sharing it with the world we want to contribute to reversing the spiral of fear and hate. Our energies focus on making the walk in Germany and the resonances we want to generate.
Lorna Brunstein and I met with Peter Jackson who has been doing some advance research ahead of the walk in Germany in February. Peter was a soldier on National Service in the area in the 1950’s when the area was receiving refugees displaced from parts of Germany whilst there he came across stories of the forced labour camps and specifically the Jewish womens camp at Ovelgonne, so ironically named ‘Walsdeslust’.
Peter showed us photographs of some surviving physical remains of the slave labour camp Waldeslust where Esther was held and from where the death march she survived started.
More than a shadow on the map now an old shed shrouded in weeds makes it more real. He met with an old man who as a boy remembers the inmates and guards with guns. Layer upon layer of memory and history: Peter saw a memorial to the refugees from parts of Germany that became Poland who had made their homes locally.
The memorial record the places left behind when new lines were drawn on the map. German speaking people living in what became Poland after the war became refugees and headed west.The layers are tangled and messy but there is a shared experience of exile from which empathy emerges. Second generation and third generation refugees from this time are supporting the walk and sharing their experience.
On the site of the slave labour camp there is indeed a Garden Centre and it does indeed grow orchids. There is even a Hambuhren orchid. These tiger orchids were shown to Peter with pride. Somewhere in that there is a motif and metaphor as powerful as the lion and the beehive on the Tate and Lyle’s Golden Syrup tin. Two stories of subjugation and appropriation: out of strength a certain sweetness, out of death a strange beauty.
We learn more about the weather. By the winter of 1944/5 Anne Frank and her sister Margot had arrived at Belsen, at that time there was no shelter other than tents for the inmates. The tents were blown away in one winter storm. Like the thousands of Russian prisoners of war who died there in appalling conditions in 1942, in February/March 1945 Anne and Margot’s lives were ended. Along with tens of thousands of others. As Esther and a group of women were being marched to that horror from Ovelgonne in that weather.
So perhaps we will walk in a winter storm..
The difference is that we will be healthy, well fed, wrapped up warm and connected to the world. We will be walking of our own freewill towards a museum that holds the evidence in memory of those who died and those who survived. We walk and network with second and third generation refugees, survivors, perpetrators, witnesses and liberators, we walk in witness to the past and in solidarity with the present.
In the face of blood and fear and bullets this is the time to be making gestures of love and solidarity; reminding ourselves of the values of internationalism and human rights. If we can do nothing else we can walk in witness. With your help that is what our walk will communicate.