The project was launched in Bath at a briefing for artist associates at the 44AD Gallery in Bath. We return to update supporters and brief walkers on Wednesday March 25 at 6.30.
Join us on
Wednesday March 25 at 6.30
44AD Gallery, Abbey Street, Bath
Find out the latest on the project from the artists leading it.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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:
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’.
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.
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.
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.
