Bearing Witness

Barney Sidler and Zeev Borger

By Paul Scraton:

On a soft summer evening in Weimar we walk through the traffic-free streets of the historic city centre, this monument to German culture with its theatres and museums, palaces and music schools, town of humanism and the Enlightenment. In the square where Goethe and Schiller stand in front of the theatre they look down upon a typical summer scene, as young people gather at their feet to drink beer while football matches are screened to the terraces of cafes and restaurants as, in the beer garden over in the corner, a live concert is about to start.

Throughout the city there are signs that it is awakening from the pandemic. There are posters for concerts and plays, puppet shows and readings, exhibitions and fairs. Bach and Liszt. Shakespeare and the Brothers Grimm. Gropius and Kandinsky. Outside Goethe’s old illustration studio, paintings hang beneath the windows of an art school while across the way music drifts out from the rehearsal rooms of the university.

This is Weimar? What does the name Weimar mean to you? A small town in Germany made great through art and words and music. A place that gave us the Bauhaus and named the democratic republic that would emerge from the devastation of the First World War battlefields. And yet, north of the centre, as we walk up towards the railway station from the New Museum, a collection of faces remind us of the other side of Weimar’s story. That this is a town that played host to some of the heights of German culture and also, up there on the hillside, some of its deepest depths. 

Because Weimar is also Buchenwald, the concentration camp on the Ettersberg that was opened in 1937 by the Nazis and would claim the lives of more than 56,000 who were held there. The bus that takes you from the town to the camp follows what became known as the ‘Blood Road’ even while the camp was in existence. If you want to walk, there is another route, a ten-kilometre trail that starts at the railway station and follows the route of the Buchenwald Railway, along which many of the inmates were taken to the camp.

Petro Mischtschuk

The stories of Buchenwald are part of the story of Weimar, and are tied to the city via the Blood Road and the old railway tracks. Within the city itself we discover stories of Goethe and Schiller, of Bach and Liszt and Strauss and Wieland and Hummel and all the other greats who lived and worked here. They have their museums and their exhibits, and they give their names to streets, schools and squares. And since 2019 they have had some company, joined along Weimar’s streets by the faces of some other, less well-known names.

Pavel Tichomirow
Andrej Moisejenko
Chaim Bukszpan
Vasile Nußbaum
Heinrich Rotmensch
Naftali Fürst
Alina Dabrowska
Petro Mischtschuk
Ottomar Rothmann
Gilberto Salmoni
Barney Sidler
Boris Romantschenko
Zeev Borger
Alojzy Maciak
Aleksandr Bytschok
Magda Brown
Eva Fahidi-Pusztai
Günter Pappenheim
Josef Falkash
Raymond Renaud
Tadeusz Kowalski
Zbigniew Pec

These men and women are just some of the more than a quarter of a million people who passed through Buchenwald or its subcamps. They were photographed by the Weimar artist Thomas Müller for Die Zeugen (The Witnesses), an exhibition that can be found in the north of Weimar between the New Museum and the station. The aim of this exhibition is relatively clear to all who emerge from the station on their walk down into town. It is to make this part of history visible and, in the words of the exhibition organisers, to ‘invite the people of Weimar and their guests to consciously pause for a minute.’

The twenty-two faces that make up the exhibition are of twenty-two survivors of the camps. They were brought to Buchenwald from Poland, Hungary, France, Ukraine, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Belarus and elsewhere in Germany. They were held for being Jewish or as political prisoners or for forced labour. By the time Müller took their pictures, they were old. In the meantime, since the exhibition was opened in April 2019, at least one of their number has passed away.

Alojzy Maciak

These are people who have been to Weimar. They were taken to the hillside where Goethe once walked, held in a camp that had been cleared from the forest. They are the witnesses to what was done in the name of Germany within sight of this symbol of German culture. And with these photographs, the town recognises them as it does its other sons and daughters. In Weimar, there are many different stories to be told and all shall have their say. All need to be heard.

On a soft summer evening we walk through Weimar. Twenty-two faces. Most are still with us to bear witness, to tell us what happened behind those gates and the barbed wire fences. Looking at them now, it is sad to think that we do not have much time left. All too soon there will be no one left to remember, at the very time nationalism is on the rise across the continent and the history of what happened in places like Buchenwald is beginning to be rewritten. In this atmosphere, as we slowly lose those who can tell us what happened in the camps, it is up to the rest of us to continue the work of remembering. Of how we got from Weimar to Buchenwald, from one end of the Blood Road to the other. The names of the victims and what was done to them, and those who survived to give us their testimony. We need to keep listening and we need to keep speaking their truth.  

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Paul Scraton is the editor in chief of Elsewhere: A Journal of Place

9 November, Berlin-Pankow

By Paul Scraton:

On this 9 November in Berlin the city is shrouded in fog as we leave our apartment on Osloer Straße. The last few days have been glorious, days made for walking, lingering in the autumn sunshine, but today the weather has closed in as we set off along the leaf-clogged pavement. But despite the change in the weather, I’m starting my week with a walk, a stroll from where I live in Gesundbrunnen across the old Berlin Wall border to Pankow, a deliberate choice for this particular morning, on this particular date.

The 9 November is Germany’s Schicksaltag, its day of fate. As I cross the bridge by the S-Bahn station at Bornholmer Straße I pass by a series of photographs from this day 31 years ago when the border was opened and thousands of people flooded across from the East to the West on the night the Berlin Wall came down. On this date in 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm was forced to abdicate in the November Revolution that ended the monarchy in Germany. On this date in 1923, Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch failed in a volley of police bullets in Munich. And on this date in 1938, the November pogrom against the Jews was unleashed, an attack on their synagogues, their property and their lives, during which 400 were killed. In the days that followed, a further 30,000 Jews would be arrested, taken to the camps where many would later perish. 

There is much to remember on this date in this city, and it has brought me to Westerlandstraße. I walk slowly along the pavement, counting down the houses until I reach number sixteen. I could have picked any number of addresses in my home city to walk to this morning, but this is the one I have chosen. In front of the house the leaves have piled up by the entranceway, covering up much of the pavement. I need to brush them aside in order to find what I am looking for, the three bronze cobblestones laid in the ground just in front of the door. Three cobblestones, one for each person: Conrad Danziger. Frieda Danziger. Emil Elie Leyser.

All three called Westerlandstraße 16 home. Conrad was an architect, who lived here with his wife Frieda from 1935. At some point after 1939, in the words of their neighbours who witnessed the event, the couple were “collected” by the authorities and taken to what was called a “Jewish Apartment” on Köpenicker Straße. On 2 March 1943, Conrad was deported to Auschwitz. On 16 June 1943, Frieda was also taken from the city, first to Theresienstadt and then later to Auschwitz. Emil, known as Elie, was their neighbour. He had lived on Westerlandstraße since 1931 with his wife Margarete, his son Leopold, Leopold’s wife Grete and their daughter Karin. Emil was arrested in 1939 and was also deported to Auschwitz on the 2 March 1943, where he was almost immediately murdered. Leopold and his family were deported to Chelmno/Kulmhof, where all three were killed. What happened to Margarete is as yet unknown. 

In front of the house on Westerlandstraße, everything is quiet. I look down at these three stones that represent three lives, all lived here in Berlin-Pankow, all extinguished in Auschwitz. Even the main road at the end of the street seems to be less busy than one would expect on a Monday morning. Perhaps it is the impact of the latest lockdown, perhaps it has something to do with the weather. Kneeling on the pavement, I try to polish the Stolpersteine, these stumbling stones that have been laid for Conrad, Frieda and Elie, the best I can. Across Germany and in other places in Europe where these stones have been laid, others will be doing the same. Polishing and placing a candle or a flower on these tiny memorials laid in the ground. Memorials that put names to the millions of lives lost in the Holocaust. Memorials that help us to tell their stories. 

I make my way back slowly through the back streets of Pankow to Bornholmer Straße, past the last of surviving embassies that were built here in GDR times, crossing the bridge once more above the railway tracks that once served as a border between two worlds. The history of Berlin can sometimes weigh heavy on this city of ours, where every street seems to contain a memorial and every date in the calendar marks some kind of anniversary. So much so that it is often very easy to miss them, to pass by without a second glance or let the dates slip by unremarked. But it remains important to remember, and perhaps today more than ever. 

Although the biographical information on the Stolpersteine is, by design, starkly limited, the Stolpersteine Berlin website has done a fantastic job of creating an online archive of life stories for many of those remembered through these tiny memorials, including the lives of Conrad Danziger, Frieda Danziger and Emil Elie Leyser, who lived at Westerlandstraße 16.

***
Paul Scraton is the editor in chief of Elsewhere: A Journal of Place. He lives in Berlin, Germany.

At Grunewald station: Memory and the danger of forgetting

By Paul Scraton

The S-Bahn train stops at a station on the edge of the forest. On one side of the tracks, a trail leads into the woods. On the other side, the leafy streets of one of Berlin’s most well-to-do neighbourhoods. I come here a lot, especially in the summer. I go for walks or a run through the forest. I climb the Drachenberg for views across the city or go swimming in the cool waters of the Teufelsee. Every time I am reminded of what Berlin holds within its boundaries. These places of peace, places where it is possible to find solitude. Places where it is possible to feel a thousand miles from the city, and yet it’s just a short train ride away. What a privilege it is...  

For around 50,000 of Berlin’s Jews, Grunewald station on the edge of the forest was the last place their feet touched the ground of their home city. From here, train after train after train took them away. Took them to the camps, to the very worst places of the human imagination. For a long time, there was no acknowledgement on the ground of this suburban station’s role in the crimes of the Holocaust. No recognition. It was only later, much later, that Platform 17 was turned into what it is today.

Along the platform on each side of the railway track, destinations are listed – Auschwitz, Riga, Theresienstadt – along with the date and the number of Jews who were deported in each transport. On this train, 17 Berliners were taken from their city. On this train, it was 51. On this train; 100. People leave stones on the edge, marking the trains that carried their loved ones away. Flowers rest and candles burn beside a memorial plaque. In this city of memorials, Platform 17 at Grunewald station is quietly one of the most powerful, and one that I feel all Berliners should take the time to visit at least once. 

Now, perhaps, more than ever. It is 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. We continue to remember the crimes of National Socialism, but we are slowly, sadly coming to the point where the last of those who can tell us what they saw and felt in those dark times will no longer be with us. It feels like a dangerous time. There are those that will say we need to draw a line beneath it. There are those that will say that we need to move on. And yet we must remember. Now, more than ever. 

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German President, stands at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘we Germans remember. But sometimes it seems as though we understand the past better than the present.’ He stands there and reminds us that Jewish schoolchildren in Germany have been spat on in the schoolyard. Not then, but now. He reminds us that it was only a thick wooden door that prevented a massacre in a synagogue in Halle. Not then, but now. 

‘That is why,’ he continues, ‘there cannot be an end to remembrance.’ 

At Grunewald station I walk slowly along the platform and read the dates and places, the destinations of those trains that will forever symbolise the very worst of what we have done to each other. Birds sing in the trees. Nie wieder, was the response to the crimes of the Holocaust. Never again. For 75 years the survivors have carried and shared their memories. They have made sure we’ve not allowed ourselves to forget. But the responsibility belongs to all of us. Nie wieder. If that is to mean anything, we must continue to remember. We must confront the past and we must understand the present. We don’t get to draw a line. We cannot allow ourselves to forget.

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Paul Scraton is the editor in chief of Elsewhere: A Journal of Place