Extinct orchids

admin on February 14, 2016

Last day in Germany we returned to the garden centre on the edge of the slave labour camp, Waldeslust. Somehow seemed appropriate to make the full circle and to buy an orchid grown on the site. orchid wrapper

It was as if a thousand years had passed as we stepped out of the car onto the sandy soil that had once been the far corner of the Officers enclosure at Waldeslust. I did not feel as if I was the same person who had left on foot two days before.

Lorna and I walked into the garden centre and in the great swathe of strange fleshy flowers we spotted the Hambuhren orchid. Or so we thought. The orchid was to be a gift to our hosts in Hannover and the idea was to get a latin name and then perhaps to track it down in England. After much translation, phone calls, garbled yiddish and german, we came to the view that this was not the one despite its confident identification 4 days earlier.

The Hambuhren Tiger Orchid had been a local speciality but was, we were, told extinct. The image we were shown on the garden centre desktop was the same garish bloom we had seen months ago and discarded as a walk icon. The orchid shown on Monday and in our hands on Saturday with its blood stained white petals told a more intricate story. We kept that one and mused on the extinction of a flower and further ironies of Waldeslust.Zuhlke carpark

Getting involved

admin on March 31, 2015

Walker registration is now closed but there are still many ways in which you can support the project:

  • Tuesday 14 April 0930. Come and see us off from the Cheese and Grain in Frome
  • Wednesday 15 April 13.30 Join us for a short walk from the paupers field at Odd Down, Bath, along footpaths to meet the main walk at Combe Down.
  • Wednesday 15 April 15.45 Join us for the closing of the walk at the old Jewish Burial Ground at Combe Down, Bath.
  • Be a driver..we are still short of support drivers
  • Be a steward.. help steward a section of the walk or one of the stops
  • Join us online and help spread the word

If you can help please contact us using the form on the front page of the website

….and yes we are still short of cash…..

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

 

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.