deathmarch | Forced Walks

Honouring Esther: revisited

rsw.post on September 9, 2022

Sunday 11 September, Honouring Esther, an installation, Bath Jewish Burial Ground 11.00-16.00

A sound and moving image installation in the old cottage alongside the Burial Ground, the ‘prayer room’. The installation is curated from digital work originally presented as part of the Forced Walks: Honouring Esther exhibitions. The Somerset cycle of walks in 2015 finished here on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It will be poignant to reflect on the work today: after Brexit, with the far right in power and close to power across Europe and as the Home Office’s Hostile Climate continues undiminished. At the time we were shocked how our walking-in-witness referencing a Nazi Death March appeared to visually resonate with the tv shots of refugees walking through the fields of eastern Europe.

What will we make of it seven years on?

2015 walk ended at Bath Jewish Burial Ground

The route of the opening two-day walk for Honouring Esther was determined by the transposition of the route of a Nazi death march to Somerset. We walked on public rights of way as close to that route as possible. The project retraced part of the journey Lorna’s mother, Esther was forced to take from Lodz, Poland, via Auschwitz, to the infamous concentration camp at Bergen Belsen. Walking 70 years later in Somerset it became our journey too. Where the line of the route in Somerset crossed the imagined line of the death march we stopped, listened to testimony, talked, asked questions and shared. In 2016, a year later, we hosted a further walk on the actual route of the death March in Germany. More than a walk-in-witness, the cycle of walks inspired by Esther Brunstein’s commitment to social justice, the project continues to generate profound conversations about the resurgence of fascism and threats to human rights.

Short immersive films and soundscapes

The installation consists of a series of short immersive films and soundscapes produced using field footage gathered by walkers from the walks in Germany and Somerset, including media gathered by a team from Bath Spa University. We are really excited to be showing the work again in Bath and we extend a welcome to all, especially those who those who walked with us. We will be there through the day. The Honouring Esther archive is here.

We are grateful to the Bath Jewish Burial Ground for the invitation to exhibit as part of the Combe Down Art trail (venue 7), and for the continuing support of Bath Spa University for this project.

After the Walk: Visiting Esther

admin on February 18, 2016

notes from Lorna Brunstein:

We returned from Germany and even though I was aware I was coming down with a cold and was also completely exhausted by the trip, I knew I had to visit mum as soon as possible. So I went to London the following day to see her.

We had done a Skype call with her in Belsen on completion of the walk, and even though we had some difficulty with communication – mum’s hearing is poor and the signal was breaking up, it was nevertheless really heartwarming to see her. She was in good spirits and excited to see us and clearly very impressed by the technology that enabled our contact to happen – her wonderful words off camera at the end of the skype…. “now that’s what I call magic!”

photo by Julia Simmons

I visited with my daughter (Esther’s Granddaughter), Alicia. I had with me an orchid flower that Annette, our wonderful host, historian and friend in Hannover, had given us to take to mum. She had taken one flower from the orchid that we had given her as a gift, which was bought from the garden centre at Ovelgonne, very close to the site of Camp Waldeslust. Annette was very keen that mum should have this flower so we needed to get it to her as soon as possible.

Mum wanted a blow-by-blow account of our week there and I showed her all the photos we had taken on the ipad. We talked to her about the Hohn camp which served as a makeshift hospital after liberation for those who were recovering from typhus, and when I told her that the hospital was in the ‘Roundhouse’ a former ballroom, she became quite animated and said that she was certainly there in a bed recovering but not in the ballroom as it was too crowded – she distinctly remembers being accommodated in one of the corridors. I shall take her a picture of the ballroom next time I go. belsen-roundhouse-windows_24415680529_o

We also talked about where the womens’ barracks in Belsen were to try to ascertain if she had any memory of where in Belsen she was, and when I asked her if she remembered any trees, she said very quickly that she did. Bernd Hostmann had asked me to ask her, as he felt sure that she would have been in the womens’ barracks which were in an area surrounded by trees. Her immediate affirmative response to that question confirmed for us that the place where we had left our stones and had played the kaddish was indeed the right place.

photo by Julia Simmons

I talked about the little building that Irmlinde showed us – the outside toilet block and only remaining structure of Waldeslust. Mum did remember and I will take her the photo of it when I visit the end of this week, as she very much wants to see it. Waldeslust remains 3

I am always concerned and mindful of not wanting to churn up painful and distressing memories for mum but she says each time that it is helpful and healing for her to know that we have been to the exact place where it all happened.

She says those thoughts are with her all the time – how could they not be? Talking and sharing them for her, affirms and validates her and what she went through. It was right we went – it was our way of bearing witness.

She said again to me that she wished she could have come and walked with us and is cross with herself that she could not!

I never ever cease to be amazed by my mother’s spirit and strength. I am truly humbled by this amazing woman.

Walk Day 1 From Ovelgonne to Winsen

admin on February 4, 2016

It begins again.
At first its a history tour, a site visit then as the conversations begin and the elements take their toll, emotion and contemporary resonances start to manifest themselves. We hear of a phone call, only yesterday, an elderly woman sharing a childhood experience seeing brutal treatment of slave labourers from the Judenlage, ‘Waldeslust’. One woman was bent over and could hardly stand, the guard beat her and when she could not get up he raised his gun and shot her. The guard then looked threateningly at the girl and she ran away.

There is another kind of memory surfacing here, the child witness who was told by parents and officials to say nothing and not question. As they come to the end of their lives the questions remain and the experience re-surface. We hear a story of children who ran up with food to the death marchers passing their homes. Small and incredibly brave acts of kindness. Dangerous to offer, dangerous to accept. A story silenced for a generation. Perhaps we have been, momentarily, a stimulus for the re-surfacing of that story. Indifference is granular and it transforms as we get closer to individual acts of indifference, complicity, courage and resistance….and childhood trauma

At last through the wind and cold, cold rain across the icy river to Winsen. Over the bridge carrying yellow tulips..not sure if this was a symbol but the yellow stood out, the colour of the star they wore. Over the bridge with flowers and ivy…some distant echo of the original meaning of Wandeslust. A group of us, more than we had expected. Older people networked by our respected and connected Julius Krizsan and informed with such sensitive and lyrical German/English by Irmlinde Florian, a community of local remembrance www.ag-bergen-belsen.de is represented and bears witness in the yellow tulips.

We walked in the cold and rain, we stopped to share and tell our stories. Revisiting the last remnants of the slave labour camp, trying to imaging 400 starving women being worked close to death and trying to survive in such a place. Beating the bounds of the camp and trying to imagine what ghosts haunt the new houses on the site. We stood at the site of the gate to the compound and listened to Esthers voice.

Against all the odds she had lived to tell the story and we were there to witness and re tell it…this happened here. Her story is ground truthed

It felt like the end of the day when we crossed the bridge carrying the yellow tulips. Passing an old redbrick building with two stars of David in relief……no one knows…. To the memorial stone at Winsen. A memorial to a brave carpenter who with the help of others enabled French prisoner on a later death march to escape, he hid them until the British army arrived. We play Paul Robeson singing The Partisans Song in their honour, for Esther and for all acts and actors of resistance. Julius K told the story and then the Mayor greeted us and invited us in to the town hall.

A truly humbling experience followed, we were welcomed with food and cakes tea, coffee and sparkling mineral water. The Mayor read a powerful statement in halting but strong English, his daughter, the same age as Esther would have been, had helped him. As we drip dried and warmed up we heard more of the story of the carpenter told in praise of those who seize the moment, do the right thing, take the risk for justice and human rights. What a man, lets have him as our Mayor!

We finished with a resonance bringing us right up to now, meeting Ismail from Iraq, one of 150 refugees currently welcomed into Winsen, and Karina from Azerbaijan, his support worker. Both had survival stories to tell crossing borders with children seeking safety, underlining the real value of organisations such as UNICEF, UNHCR and the Red Cross. Belonging begins with a sense of safety, in Winsen the welcome is warm. Putting us to shame as UK citizens. As Karina said these are world problems, we are all people we have to work together to solve them. We connected past with present, at least now they communicate.

Preparing the way

admin on February 2, 2016

First days in Germany

Celle childhood installation

A teddy bear in a museum/gallery in Celle Synagogue reduces me to tears. A childhood under the shadow of the swastika. An empty room with a tin bath and a teddy. A child’s toy bears witness. The bear materialised my tears. The squalid last days of the war, one town helped death marchers escape and hid them, in another, coerced or complicit, locasl people chased down and shot or captured escaped prisoners. The Celle Hare Hunt. The rounded up survivors were death marched to Belsen perhaps along the same route we had driven.
Celle stolpersteine2
The Celle Synagogue: it survived Nazi thug axes and was never put to flame as it would have set the town alight. Here new life and recovery began as Belsen survivors reclaimed the building in 1946. In the street outside polished by snow grip grit, rain and foot fall, my first Stolpersteine, ‘stumbling stones’ peoples remembering places for the people that once lived there, old people who fled to Holland but were brought back to Auschwitz to be killed, others disappeared and one my mothers age dead before she could be a mother. Here remembered.
Hambuhren Tiger Orchid4
This afternoon we are seated in the Zuhlke garden centre alongside Hambuhren Tiger orchids. Here we meet with Julius Krizsan our local fixer and former Green Party MP, as avuncular and no nonsense as I had expected from our email exchanges, local historian Irmlinde Florian, eye witness Hans Ovelmann and Herr Zuhlke, owner of the garden centre that sits at the edge of the Waldeslust site. The walk was toasted with light bulb glasses of Irmlinde’s red home brew. Prost.

Later we tour the perimeter of the site and view the remains of Waldeslust, what horrors and squalor has that building seen. We see some things that Esther may have seen and we look on. Try to imagine and can’t. The tall trees are recent, the big one perhaps a sapling 71 years ago. A Narnia lamp in a thawed landscape, darkening trees and evergreens, the absence of snow adding to the macabre.
Waldeslust remains 3
We are overwhelmed already, immersed. Tomorrow checking day two of the walk, the long haul through the woods to Belsen.

Local research for the walk in Germany. Thoughts on blood and fear

admin on November 22, 2015

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.

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

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”

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”

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

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