The faces and names of those murdered are projected onto the walls of the Gasteig. Cantor Nikola David from the liberal Jewish community Beth Shalom in Munich sings the funeral prayer “El Male Rachamim”. “Faces for the names” is the title of the memorial service intended to remember the victims of the Hamas terror of October 7th. Around 40 Munich residents came together on Saturday evening.
It is an improvised, simple event to which the Jewish “Stolpersteine” activist Terry Swartzberg invited. It should be about sadness. About courage. And about sending a signal to Israel. “Let us show our sympathy and solidarity,” Swartzberg wrote in his invitation. His goal: “Standing together for a courageous and vigilant Jewry in a Europe of diversity and tolerance.” Jews and all representatives of a free, progressive society should not hide and thereby leave the streets to their enemies.
“Human dignity is inviolable.” This is what Jörg Spengler always tells his students at the end of visits to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial. The sentence must also apply when remembering the terrorist attack on October 7th and its victims. Spengler, chairman of the Haidhausen district committee, thanks Swartzberg for his initiative. “Now especially – that’s the spirit we all need.”
The faces and names of those murdered are then projected onto the Gasteig again. Participants read eyewitness reports from Israel. Sentences like these: “We are all in despair, in horror.” Despair and terror, says Terry Swartzberg, must not have the last word. Since October 7th, his emails have begun with the phrase “broken hearted and determined.”