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?

Odd Down field

Or was I looking the wrong way?

Odd Down graves

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

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.