A two day walk to Bath

admin on January 13, 2015

The Honouring Esther walk is now shaping up well ahead of the launch of the project on January 27, the link up with historian and librarian, Peter Jackson, is generating powerful material informing the walk.

Further research with Esther supported by contact at the Bergen Belsen Memorial Museum indicate that the death march took several days. Esther recalls the feel of the cold frosty ground, it must have been a desperate experience, starved half to death, worked to the point of death and then forced to march in flimsy worn out clothing with no protection against the elements. In winter in Germany. There were deaths along the way.
This map of shows the route of the February 1945 death march. The caption says ‘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’.
map
In consequence we are now planning for a two day walk, beginning in Frome, Somerset on Tuesday 14 April and walking to Hinton Charterhouse, then on Wednesday 15 April walking from Hinton Charterhouse to Combe Down Bath. It looks like there will be approximately 10 points where the actual walk coincides with the symbolic line of the death march, in principle each one of these will be the site of some kind of intervention. Strangely some of the graves marked on the map are almost exactly at points where the actual walk we will do in April cross the symbolic line on the map.

reference: ‘Besondere Vorkommnisse nicht bekannt: Zwangsarbeiter in unterirdischen Rustungebetrieben: wie ein Heidedorf kriegswichtig wurde’.The author is Annette Wienecke, who was a school teacher in Hambuhren and wrote the book in 1998.

Honouring Esther walk ready for ground truthing

admin on October 1, 2014

I have now re drawn the route that we think Esther might have been forced along from the slave labour camp back to the death camp at Bergen Belsen taking into account her testimony and our research. Roads will have changed since 1945 but this is mapped against a current road route rather than tracks through the country. So we have a river crossing and a walk through  at least two settlements. I have transposed the shape and orientation of that route to England in Scribblemaps as described in the route finding section of this site and hooked it to our chosen finish point in Bath.

I imported the .gpx file of the death march Esther was on from Scribble maps to Viewranger

Using a combination of  Viewranger and Scribble maps I have now worked out a route in England. More or less from Frome into Bath. This weaves like a memory or a DNA spiral around the historic route and provides us with a series of intersections where we can plan moments of memorial and reflection.

Here’s the link to the routes in Scribble map, the red indicates the ‘historic route’ same length and orientation as the walk Esther was forced on in 1945 and the green indicates a possible route of a walk in Somerset retracing that historic walk as closely as possible. This could give us up to 10 intersections.

[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=zG0FerrHE65o.kag4W27uQz-M&w=640&h=480]

I’ll publish this to Viewranger when I have ground truthed it. About 15 miles with up to 10 point of intersection. At these points we will create some kind of intervention reflecting on those who did not survive, those who did and those who are still walking from war and persecution.

Honouring Esther …. draft for walking in April 2015

admin on July 29, 2014

Esther’s Walk in UK first draft.
On the basis of Esther Brunstein’s testimony and research to confirm locations Richard has plotted the route from the work camp near Hamburen to the death camp at Bergen Belsen.
“Using scribble map I was able to drag the line of that estimated route retaining shape, scale and orientation and drop it on to our chosen finish point in Bath. The line offered a starting point on the edge of Frome. I have now plotted a contemporary route on rights of way as close as possible to that historic route.”
Dragged and dropped estimated historic route is in red, contemporary route in green.

Tags remain on Bergen Belsen and Waldeslust near Hanover indicating the actual starting and finishing points of the route that Esther and a group of some 80 Polish Jewish women  were forced to walk in the depths of winter, February 1945.

http://scribblemaps.com/api/maps/images/450/450/2cp27cMdhF.png

The estimated route of the the walk from the slave labour camp to Belsen:

[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=zG0FerrHE65o.k5kvqlATWHv0&w=640&h=480]

Our proposal is to undertake some personal and collective acts of reflection, honouring and respect at the points where the historic route and the contemporary route intersect. We will encourage participants to mark this and share it in some way and subject to mobile signal our intention is that some of this will be networked live via social media to those unable to make the walk. We will further gather and network at the end point.