Reminder in Sobibor: relatives are demanding more say

On the anniversary of the uprising in the Sobibor extermination camp, descendants of the victims criticized the removal of a memorial avenue they designed. They are demanding more say in the culture of remembrance, which is also financed with German tax money.

When Elke Tischer and Hans-Joachim Gutmann found out that the more than 300 stones and memorial plaques from the memorial avenue in Sobibor were to be removed, it was initially a big shock for them. In 2006 they accompanied their father Kurt Gutmann to lay a stone in memory of his murdered mother and brother. Relatives of Jewish victims from all over Europe had come, and so the memorial avenue had grown name by name, stone by stone. No state-organized remembrance, but remembrance lived by the descendants.

The focus is on the individual fates of the victims. This approach opens up a different memory than the figures from the statistics of state-organized mass murder.

During “Aktion Reinhardt” between March 1942 and November 1943, the Nazis murdered an estimated two million Jews, Sinti and Roma and their relatives in occupied Poland. There were also around 200,000 deported Jews, mainly from Germany, France and the Netherlands.

As a result, more people died in the three German extermination camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka than in the German extermination camp Auschwitz, which is now widely regarded as a symbol of the Shoah. The memorial avenue of Sobibor, which leads through a dense forest, reconstructs the path that the prisoners had to take from the ramp of the railroad tracks to the gas chambers.

The camp was disbanded after the uprising on October 14, 1943; only 365 inmates managed to escape at the time. 180,000 Jews from Poland and other parts of Europe had the Germans murdered in the Sobibor extermination camp. In order to cover up all traces of the mass murders, the perpetrators destroyed the camp, burned the corpses, scattered their ashes and planted trees over them.

Jeanette Gutmann, the mother of Kurt Gutmann, his brother Hans-Joachim and his uncle Fritz Kann did not survive. From 2009 to 2011, Kurt Gutmann was the only German co-plaintiff to take part in the trial of the former SS guard John Demjanjuk, who, according to a court ruling, had been involved in the murder in the Sobibor extermination camp since 1943.

Memorial stones removed

A few weeks ago, Elke Tischer and Hans-Joachim Gutmann protested in writing against the removal of the stones from the memorial avenue: “The remodeling of the memorial is now being used as an opportunity to level the previous memorial avenue and remove the memorial stones there Memorial stones for the dead, including family members of ours. Why can’t one treat the memorial stones with dignity and piety. Has one forgotten that the memorial is a cemetery? ”

In fact, they received an answer in a letter from the management of the Sobibor Museum, the SWR exists and was able to clarify at least some points. The management points out that the relocation had been discussed and agreed with the “International Steering Committee” with representatives from Poland, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Slovakia and Israel. The letter also refers to the collaboration with the educational institute Stanlisaw Hantz from Kassel and the Stichting Sobibor from Amsterdam.

Literally it says: “In consultation with these foreign partners, the memorial stones will be relocated in a dignified manner and placed in another place, that is, along the asphalt road The place where the last route of the victims who were driven to the gas chambers was. The memorial stones will be placed along the main route, “writes Tomasz Oleksy-Zborowski from the Sobibor Museum.

Carry on the memory

But this was never discussed with the relatives who laid out the memorial avenue. On the contrary, inquiries were not answered, criticized Elke Tischer. In mid-September, the two traveled from Berlin to Sobibor themselves to clarify the whereabouts of the stones on site.

“After the death of our father in December 2017, it was a matter of course for us that we take up his baton and continue to remind them of the crimes that have been committed to our family,” explains Elke Tischer and, together with her brother Hans-Joachim Gutmann, now laid the groundwork lend a hand in removing the stone for grandmother and uncle. But the future whereabouts of the stones and thus the increased memory is uncertain. That is why they and other relatives are now calling for a greater say in the future of Sobibor. They want the offspring to have an active role.

Critic: Civil society engagement ignored

Support comes from Kamil Majchrzak, Vice President of the International Buchenwald Committee (IKBD). His grandparents became victims of Nazi terror shortly after the Germans attacked Poland in 1939. “For us descendants, however, the story is not over. With our forms of remembrance, we also want to participate in the educational work in the memorials, continue to be witness and maintain a lively culture of remembrance,” he says SWR.

Majchrzak sees responsibility not only on the Polish side, but also on the German side. “The lack of awareness of the memorial avenue in Sobibor, which arose from the cooperation between survivors and descendants of the victims with German and Dutch civil society, is also the result of the federal government’s lack of a holistic strategy of remembrance policy,” says Majchrzak. Those actually affected are much further than the ritualized culture of remembrance, but these initiatives do not find the recognition and participation they deserve.

Open questions between Germany and Poland

Elke Tischer also calls for more support for the interests of the descendants from the German government: “As relatives, we still do not take our request to be included in the memorial work seriously. The German Bundestag has budget funds for such projects both in Germany and Poland decided, why, to my knowledge, has the memorial not used these funds so far? Or are they not aware of these financial support options? “

When asked, the Federal Foreign Office confirmed that the federal government is funding the memorial in Sobibor with a sum of one million euros in the period from 2018 to 2021. However, the political responsibility for the design and handling of the memorial lies with the Polish authorities. Literally it says in the reply to the SWR: “The museum and the Sobibor Memorial have been part of the Majdanek Memorial since the beginning of 2012 and are therefore directly subordinate to the Polish Ministry of Culture. The Federal Government has no influence on how the culture of remembrance is handled on site, whether and how civil society is involved.”