Commemorative events at the Space to Remember, May 2024

On May 2, 2024, the working group “Ort der Verbundenheit” (Space to Remember) once again hosted an open printing workshop for relatives of former inmates followed by a public poster presentation to mark the 79th anniversary of the liberation of the prisoners of Neuengamme concentration camp.

Almost 200 relatives and others who were interested attended the event. A group of relatives even organized a bus trip from the Netherlands, many of them having designed a poster about a persecuted family member themselves. Relatives also came from Ukraine as well as Poland and Germany.

Since 2020, family members have been commemorating former prisoners of the Neuengamme concentration camp at the Space to Remember, using self-designed posters to make their stories of persecution and life visible. The poster motifs are available on site as printing plates and can be printed by hand in the adjacent printing workshop in the ‘Plattenhaus’. Printing the self-designed poster for the first time, taking it out of the printing press and holding the freshly printed poster in their hands while the ink is still wet – for many relatives, this is a very special moment.

Due to the great demand in the printing workshop, there were two tents set up between the ‘Plattenhaus’ and ‘Klinkerwerk’ this year. People could drink coffee and eat cake there before and after printing. Many guests carried tent benches into the sunshine and used them to chat and exchange ideas with a view of the archive shelf in front of the ‘Plattenhaus’.

The shelf on which the printing plates are displayed in the outdoor area in front of the ‘Plattenhaus’ has been extended once again. 25 new printing plates were added this year. There are now already 144 printing plates designed by relatives from many countries that commemorate former prisoners.

At the public poster presentation in the Klinkerwerk following the open printing workshop, the more than 50 relatives present gave an impressive presentation of the poster motifs they had designed. Barbara Hartje, Chairwoman of the Friends of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, hosted the event and emphasized the importance of a memorial site like the Space to Remember, where the experiences of future generations also become visible: “Each poster tells the story of the suffering of a prisoner in the Neuengamme concentration camp in a very individual way, whether he died from the inhumane conditions in the camp or survived them. And some of the posters also tell of the impact these fates had on the children and grandchildren, i.e. the following generations in the families.”

Sandra Polom and Henk Vlieger spoke on behalf of the relatives present and presented the posters they had designed in memory of their family members. The event was musically accompanied by Hans-Jürgen Buhl on the saxophone.

Sandra Polom designed a poster for her grandmother Genowefa Banasiak for the Space to Remember. This is the first poster for a female prisoner from one of the women’s satellite camps of Neuengamme concentration camp to be designed for the Space to Remember. At the same time, it is also the first poster commemorating a prisoner from Poland. Sandra Polom told the story of the persecution of her grandparents, who were both deported from Poland to concentration camps in Germany and liberated in Sweden at the end of the war. For a long time, she knew very little about her grandparents’ persecution story: “When I was growing up, of course I knew that my grandparents were in a concentration camp, but I didn’t know anything more specific. My grandfather died when I was ten years old, my grandmother lived to be 90, but was no longer able to talk about it in her old age. In 2017, everything changed for me: my mother received a letter from the former International Tracing Service of the Red Cross (ITS) in Germany, saying that they wanted to return my grandmother’s jewelry, her so-called effects, which had been taken from her when she was deported to the concentration camp so many years ago. After the initial shock of this news had passed and we had received the jewelry, I began to research obsessively – I found out more and more and just couldn’t stop. Piece by piece, I was able to almost completely reconstruct the story of my grandparents’ persecution.” Sandra Polom sees it as her responsibility to remember what happened and, in particular, to also report on individual fates and tell their names “so that they are not just part of the statistics”. “It’s not easy to bear this history with you, but it helps to talk about it and share it with others,” reflected Sandra Polom on her role and thanked all those who dedicate themselves to commemorative work.

Henk Vlieger spoke in his speech about the persecution of his four uncles, who were deported from the Netherlands to Neuengamme concentration camp. None of them survived their imprisonment. In his speech, he impressively described his connection to the place and also his motivation to return to it: “For me, Neuengamme concentration camp is not an abstract memory, but a place that is deeply rooted in my family history. Four of my uncles, innocent men, were torn from their lives between February and April 1945 and murdered in Neuengamme concentration camp and in the satellite camps at Wöbbelin and Sandbostel. It is here, in the midst of this charged atmosphere, that I feel my personal connection to them. I feel obliged not only to commemorate my uncles, but also to bear witness to the immeasurable suffering they endured along with countless others. Their names, their faces are the living memory that brings me here, to this place of pain and loss.”

The highlight of the event was the collective mentioning of the names of those persecuted. More than 30 relatives lined up with “their” printing plate and one by one said the name of the former prisoner that they honored with their poster.

The working group “Ort der Verbundenheit” would like to thank all relatives, those involved and all interested parties who made the commemorative events possible and contributed to their success. They have once again shown how important a memorial site such as the Space to Remember is within the culture of remembrance, precisely because it is defined by the commitment of relatives. As Henk Vlieger summarized in his speech: “The Space to Remember shows that remembrance is not only an individual act, but also a collective one in which we share responsibility for preserving history. So as we gather here, let us not only remember the loss, but also the power of remembrance and our solidarity.”

At the end of the commemorative event, posters were put up together. All the new posters can now be seen on the billboard at the ‘Plattenhaus’.

---

You can find more pictures of the event on the Facebook page Posters herinneringsplek Neuengamme.

You can find the speeches from the commemorative event here.