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SOPHIA ALBRECHT
Director / event manager
In Israel it is customary to make a commemorative trip to Poland, Auschwitz. The students from the last year of the school, aged around 17, take part in this trip. We, German and Israeli scouts, took this fact as an opportunity to think about how these memories could bring the participants from both countries closer together. How we can use the past to create a better future for all of us in the present. These thoughts have been with us for quite some time; they have been discussed and thought through again and again.
Sophia Albrecht, club leader at our local scout tribe “VCP Stamm Lechrain e.V.”, has gotten to know some scouts in Israel in recent years through her continued volunteer work in Holocaust memorial work. This also applies to Dor Posner, the director of international meetings for one of the Israeli scout movements, with whom she came up with the idea at the end of 2021 of making a regular remembrance trip to Upper Bavaria and combining it with the idea of a German-Israeli youth encounter. To provide further support, Sarah Schliffke joined the campaign as a member of the VCP's Israel/Middle East specialist group.
“We have a difficult past in this region, and not just because of Dachau: there were 11 subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp in the Landsberg district. These housed mostly Jews, who spent 10 months building a huge bunker that was to be used to build fighter planes,” explains Ms. Albrecht. “Between 1944 and 1945, around 23,000 forced laborers were brought to these camps, almost half of whom did not survive until the liberation in April 1945.”
Today, the associations “Landsberg Citizens' Association in the 20th Century e.V.” and “Gedenken in Kaufering e.V.” carry out important memorial and educational work in the district. This primarily includes working with Holocaust survivors who come to Landsberg/Kaufering every year, take part in memorial events and with whom the club members visit schools and make it possible to talk to contemporary witnesses there.
The special thing about the Landsberg/Kaufering subcamp complex is that small parts of Camp 7 are still standing and are maintained by the European Holocaust Memorial Foundation. The bunker, which is three quarters complete, still stands today and is used by the Bundeswehr.
“We would like to give the young people a real alternative program to the usual souvenir trip to Poland,” says project manager Ms. Albrecht. “The aim is for the participants not only to learn something about our shared history, but also to be able to see and understand it in real terms. And they don't just visit an exhibition, but spend a week intensively studying the past of an entire region and seeing several aspects of it. It is also important to us to show not only the dark and sad past of our two countries and religions, but also our friendship today. Therefore, the most important aspect of this week of remembrance is the meeting of German and Israeli young people and a joint coming to terms with history.”
In the first week of Pentecost, the first youth encounter in this context started as a pilot project. 70 young people from Israel met 20 young people from the Landsberg am Lech district. The program included a visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial, a tour of Munich's government district, coming to terms with Nazi history in the Munich Nazi Documentation Center and discussions about how what happened had developed in the previous years, an online conversation with contemporary witnesses Survivor Avigdor Neumann, as well as guided tours of the bunker or today's Guelph barracks and Camp 7 in Landsberg/Kaufering.
“We have a difficult past in this region, and not just because of Dachau: there were 11 subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp in the Landsberg district. These housed mostly Jews, who spent 10 months building a huge bunker that was to be used to build fighter planes,” explains Ms. Albrecht. “Between 1944 and 1945, around 23,000 forced laborers were brought to these camps, almost half of whom did not survive until the liberation in April 1945.”
Today, the associations “Landsberg Citizens' Association in the 20th Century e.V.” and “Gedenken in Kaufering e.V.” carry out important memorial and educational work in the district. This primarily includes working with Holocaust survivors who come to Landsberg/Kaufering every year, take part in memorial events and with whom the club members visit schools and make it possible to talk to contemporary witnesses there.
The special thing about the Landsberg/Kaufering subcamp complex is that small parts of Camp 7 are still standing and are maintained by the European Holocaust Memorial Foundation. The bunker, which is three quarters complete, still stands today and is used by the Bundeswehr.
The evening discussions to process what we had seen were particularly important. “You notice that you have changed and achieved something with people when they don't go straight to playing table tennis after dinner in their free time, but also form discussion groups and young people pester the team members and day speakers with questions and theses,” says Ms. Sarig, one of the group leaders of the Israeli participants.
In addition to learning about history, the young people should also get to know beautiful Upper Bavaria and get to know the German participants better. A visit to the Olympic Park, a cross-country game in the English Garden, eating ice cream in downtown Landsberg, a soccer and tennis day, shopping and open evenings were also part of the program.
“Our final evening in the Bavarian restaurant was particularly nice. “We were not only able to try out a variety of typical dishes, but also get to know some Bavarian traditions and say goodbye to our new friends,” said one of the Israeli participants. It was also an honor to have Dr. Charlotte Knobloch, the President of the Israelite Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, who warmly welcomed the group to Germany and called the project a great success and something very important for German-Israeli friendship.
Saying goodbye was particularly difficult for everyone. Strong friendships have developed between the participants and private visits to Germany and Israel have already been planned and scheduled. If you would like to see more pictures and videos of the remembrance youth encounter, you are welcome to visit the Facebook or Instagram page of VCP Stamm Lechrain e.V. (@vcp_stamm_lechrain_ev).
What is certain is that the pilot project was a complete success. Planning for 2023 is already underway and additional groups are to be invited (probably on three dates, a total of around 200-300 participants). If you are interested, please let us know!
Anyone who is independently interested in the history of the district is welcome to contact the associations “Gedenken in Kaufering e.V.” and “Landsberg Citizens' Association in the 20th Century e.V.”, the European Holocaust Memorials Foundation or the Welfenkaserne Landsberg for a tour of Camp 7 or the bunker.
The project of the scouts of the VCP Stamm Lechrain e.V. was supported by the Landsberg district office, the Landsberg district youth ring, the Bavarian youth ring and memorial in Kaufering e.V..
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