As a television correspondent in Israel from 1988 to 1996, Friedrich Schreiber was very familiar with the subject of the Holocaust and the trauma suffered by many of the survivors and their families. So it is not surprising that the journalist, who lives in the Würmtal near Munich, enthusiastically took part in the initiative to erect memorials to commemorate the death march from the Dachau concentration camp towards the Alps. On Tuesday, Schreiber “passed away peacefully surrounded by his family at the age of 92,” according to the association “Gedenken im Würmtal”, which he founded in 2007 and of which he was chairman until 2018.
This commemoration was initiated by the municipality of Gauting, where the first death march memorial by the sculptor Hubertus von Pilgrim was erected in 1989 at the instigation of Mayor Ekkehard Knobloch. After his return to Germany, Schreiber became intensively involved in commemorating the victims of National Socialism in the area around his home town of Lochham from 1997 onwards. “Under the motto ‘Bringing memorials to life’, he mobilized us and many other citizens in 1998 for a first memorial procession along a section of the death march route in order to actively remember the suffering and victims of this ordeal,” says Hans-Joachim Stumpf from the board of the “Commemoration in the Würmtal” association.
Holocaust survivors Zwi Katz, Max Mannheimer and Abba Naor were also present at this first memorial march. In the following years, Schreiber repeatedly succeeded in persuading concentration camp survivors from Israel, whom he had met during his years as a correspondent there, and their families to take part in the marches through the Würm Valley from the Gräfelfing district of Lochham to Gauting. “Every year, several hundred committed citizens of the Würm Valley, including many young people, honored the victims and survivors of the death march together with their Israeli fellow marchers – who had become friends by then,” said association chairman Stumpf.

Schreiber, born in Munich in 1932, studied economics and political science in Munich and the USA in the 1950s and initially worked for the EEC Commission in Brussels before joining Bavarian Radio as a television journalist in 1964. After retiring, he researched the horrors in the Dachau concentration camp subcamps and during the death marches. “The reports of his close friend Zwi Katz about his personal story of suffering in the Kaufering concentration camp subcamp complex also served as an authentic source,” writes Stumpf. For Friedrich Schreiber, it was particularly important to “pass the baton of remembrance on to the youth,” as he characterized his joint work with schoolchildren and young people with Katz, who died in Israel this June.
He successfully campaigned for bronze casts of Pilgrim’s memorials to be erected in other locations to commemorate the death marches. In 2015, Schreiber was awarded the Bavarian Constitutional Medal in Silver for his commitment. The funeral will take place on Friday, September 20, at 2 p.m. in the Gräfelfing cemetery.