Honouring Esther. Making connections … thoughts

admin on November 13, 2015

The walk in Germany will remind us that a refugee’s journey continues until they find safety and a welcome and a sense of belonging. For many it is a life long search. In the end we are all migrants and we all need safety, security, love and friendship.

For those on the move today their journey continues from terror and persecution trudging across inhospitable lands and  surviving perilous sea journeys. Here in our relative comfort we need to make that slogan ‘refugees welcome’ real right to our doors. It is not essential for all of us to go in person to the beaches of the greek islands or the refugee camps on the borders, we can give money, food and clothing. But more than that we can work to greet the refugees that arrive in our country to support them and make them feel safe and welcome….and continue to do so. Its a long journey.

For Esther it took two years before she managed to get into Britain even though her only surviving close family member was already in the country and the rest of her family killed by the Nazis. Even after that the welcome was uncertain and her story difficult to tell.

We have much to learn from Esther, we feel out project is timely.

Please help us get this last phase funded, click the link below:

Forced Walks: Honouring Esther. Germany. 2016

Acts of kindness

admin on November 11, 2015

Logo final

Click here to help realise this project in Germany

A first contact from Winsen an der Aller

Here the death march crossed the river Aller. We learn that there was another death march after the one from Ovelgönne, in April 1945 days before the arrival of the Allies a march came through from Hannover. 9 French people escaped and were hidden.

We are contacted by an elderly school teacher who informs us of a memorial stone, sited just north of the river. We will find the stone and here the walk first day of our walk will finish and the second day begin.

Veranstaltungsorte: evang. "St. Johannes der Täufer"-Kirche | Gedenkstein "Am Amtshof"

Veranstaltungsorte: evang. “St. Johannes der Täufer”-Kirche | Gedenkstein “Am Amtshof”

The teacher informs us of this brave act of resistance and kindness and leaves us with a question….can anyone out there help?

On the stone the carpenter Wilhelm Scheinhardt and his wife Alwine are mentioned, who hid nine french inmates from a death march til the liberation by the British Army.

The only thing we do not know up to now is: Which British unit liberated Südwinsen ? They were members of the 8th Parachute Battalion as the PEGASUS ARCHIVE has told us and the Scheinhardts handed the French inmates over to them. We think that there must have been a notice in some war diary about this.

Crowd funding campaign launched, invitations to walk open

admin on November 11, 2015

Today launched the crowd funding campaign to a tremendous early response. With a small fund rolling over from the first phase Richard and Lorna are confident that the walk itself is secured are now offer invitation to join and participate in the final phase of the project.

Check out the crowd funding campaign here….. 28 days to raise £3000!

Forced Walks: Honouring Esther. Germany. 2016

Please share the link widely.

If you are thinking about joining the walk check out the details here and please get in touch on the contact form at the bottom of the page. Please like the facebook page and join the twitter stream…see the column to your right.

Good contact are being made in Germany, Richard and Lorna are especially keen to engage with walkers, artists, those working with refugees and anyone wishing to share second and third generation experiences. The contemporary resonances are poignant and powerful.

” We walk inspired by Esther’s spirit of internationalism and humanitarianism”

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