Volunteer work in Holocaust memorial work

Sophia has been involved in Holocaust memorial work for several years. In her home district of Landsberg am Lech there are subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp, but the people there are hardly aware of this and the history of the region has been suppressed for a long time.

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From June 1944 to April 1945, a total of around 23,000 prisoners were deported to Landsberg as forced laborers. They were housed in ten subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp around Landsberg and Kaufering under inhumane conditions (an eleventh camp was not used). The hard work and the inhumane conditions, such as lack of food, illness and cold, resulted in large numbers of victims among the concentration camp prisoners. Over 6,300 forced laborers did not survive (6,334 deaths are documented). In addition, around 2,700 prisoners were selected as unfit for work and deported to other concentration camps - primarily to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. (Source: Wikipedia)

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The associations Commemoration in Kaufering e.V. and Citizens' Association in the 20th Century e.V. have, among other things, been organizing a week of remembrance in the region for years, to which survivors and their families (especially from Israel) are invited to Germany to commemorate their family members there to continue telling the story in schools through contemporary witness interviews.

Since 2018, Sophia and the club members have been organizing, in addition to the memorial week, a cultural week "Culture Against Forgetting", in which Jewish culture is shown, as well as a youth exchange between German and Israeli young people.

A group of German young people always travel to Israel to talk to survivors, to get to know the country of Israel, to maintain friendships with the survivors, their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and to experience history and the present differently.

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At the same time, Sophia organizes together with the association “VCP Stamm Lechrain e.V.” Since 2022, a youth encounter week, in which 60 scouts from Israel and 20 from Germany come together in Munich and spend a week dealing with the topic of the Holocaust in the region (Munich, Dachau, Kaufering), Jewish life in Germany and German- deal with Israeli friendship.

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In 2022 she also produced a large video series on the topic of "Celebrating Jewish festivals - 1700 years of Jewish life in Germany" in which 6 videos of around 40 minutes each were created.

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Further information about Commemoration in Kaufering e.V.: