The commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust is often characterized by “solidified rituals,” says Jan Mühlstein, co-founder of the liberal Jewish community Beth Shalom in Munich and contemporary witness of the second generation of Shoah victims. One now wants to distance oneself from this and prove that young people in particular can also be sensitized to historical events in other ways. This year, for the first time, there will be an exhibition in the Kupferhaus Planegg along with various accompanying events in addition to the Würmtal commemorative procession. “The spectrum of commemoration is to be expanded with this exhibition,” says Mühlstein, whose community is organizing the events together with the commemoration association in Würmtal and other supporters.
In memory of the concentration camp prisoners who were driven through the Würmtal on death marches in the last days of the Second World War, the Würmtal memorial procession has been held for 24 years. After it had to be canceled due to the pandemic, it will take place again on Saturday, April 30th after a two-year break. The procedure follows roughly the same technical process as in pre-corona times. At the memorials, students from the participating schools will read from the literature of the survivors of the death march, as Hans-Joachim Stumpf, chairman of the Würmtal Commemoration Association, says. Political representatives are also invited again. The Munich District Administrator Christoph Göbel and his Starnberg colleague Stefan Frey as well as the mayors and local councilors from the Würmtal have already confirmed.
After the last survivors of the death march recently died, witnesses of the second generation will tell their family history this year, says Stumpf, including guests from Israel. Due to the current situation, it is also important on the day of the memorial procession to build a bridge from the past to the present and thus to address Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, Stumpf emphasizes: “You don’t just want to commemorate, but also, especially in view of the show humanity and the flag in the current political situation, get involved in the community and actively represent your position.”
A big novelty this year is the exhibition “Remembered Present” in the Kupferhaus Planegg with the associated accompanying program. On display are documents on the Theresienstadt ghetto, information boards on its relationship to the Würm Valley and works by the Munich artist Marlies Poss “to preserve the memory of Jewish fates in the Nazi era,” as the flyer says. Thomas Schaffert, deputy chairman of the “Gedendenden im Würmtal” association and deputy director of the Planegg-Krailing music school, says that the Würmtal was only ever perceived as a setting for the commemorative procession. Few people knew that people of Jewish origin were also persecuted and deported from these communities. The exhibition “Remembered Present” now establishes a specific reference to the location.
The exhibition will open with a vernissage on Monday, May 9th. According to Mühlstein, there will be a panel discussion with students, the former head of the ARD studio in Tel Aviv, Richard Schneider, and Judith Faesseler, the granddaughter of the well-known concentration camp survivor Max Mannheimer. The second accompanying event will be a lecture by Maximilian Strnad on “Deportations of Munich Jews 1941-45” on May 16. It continues on May 23 with a reading from the novel “Die Todgeweihten” by Berthie Philipp and musical accompaniment by the group Youkali. On May 30, Mühlstein himself will give a lecture entitled “Theresienstadt as Family History” and at the closing event on June 26, the Essen Philharmonic Soloists will perform in cooperation with the Ensemble Musica Sacra Planegg-Krailing at a Holocaust memorial concert. Pieces by Jewish composers, some of which were composed in Theresienstadt itself, would be played.
The accompanying events begin at 7 p.m., the exhibition is open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Admission is free, pre-registrations can be made online.