Erding - 200 work cards with photos of Nazi forced laborers in the district gave the victims a face.
The memorial rally on Schrannenplatz was impressive.
Almost Schrannenplatz was filled with people of all ages on Saturday, who together remembered around 8,000 victims of Nazi forced labor in the Erding district. Historian Giulio Salvati and other organizations called for this on the 76th anniversary of the end of the war and liberation from National Socialism. In order to give the victims a face, the organizers had hung up around 200 work cards with the data of the forced laborers, a very impressive gallery of human fates.
"I am aware that with this campaign and also with our memory path this coming weekend from Eichenkofen to the former camp of the forced laborers, I am tearing open wounds that have often not yet healed," said Salvati, explaining the idea of his research, which has now been going for seven years. “But we should arouse an awareness of injustice that many do not even know without being bitter because of it,” he emphasizes. “Why do we, 76 years after the end of the war and a racist dictatorship, can't stand many of the stories? Why are we so passed out? ”He asked. "After all, these people lived among us."
Mayor Max Gotz also spoke out in favor of showing concern and emotions. “Every card hung here, every picture is a memorial. We too should all warn that this kind of story must not be repeated. Anything that happens under duress can never be good. Any failure in humanity must be punished. Even if we are suffering from a pandemic today, we are still living in a very happy time compared to the 1940s. We should think about that. "
Ulla Dieckmann, spokeswoman for the Bunt statt Braun alliance, recalled that entire families, even villages, were abducted for forced labor: “Many people who have worked for such people in the past, including those affected themselves, still live with a lot of shame and don't want to talk about how they were treated. They were robbed of their roots and their future, were often poorly housed and cared for. ”Her co-spokesman Tobias Hupfer stated that“ only some people today understand how close forced labor had once come to their own families ”.
It was quiet in the stately crowd when Georg Wiesmaier, who spoke for the Education and Science Union and the Dorfen History Workshop, told of the terrible fate of a young Pole. This was housed on a farm in Eitting and is said to have molested the farmer's daughter. As a punishment, he was hanged in the forest in front of his compatriots. The then district administrator spoke admonishing words. “But back then there were also Germans with a lot of moral courage,” said Wiesmaier, “who did not tolerate everything, but lived dangerously”.
For Gesine Goetz, spokeswoman for Pax Christi Erding-Dorfen, keeping an alert mind remains topical: “We should always break the spell of objectification, not just see a photo or a card behind every person, as was once the case with forced labor happened during the Nazi era.
People should never be just inventory. "
Andreas Bialas, who is researching forced labor in the Mühldorf district, accompanied the common memory with a Polish song.
The Erdinger Loechle family played klezmer music.
And Margit Hohenberger, art teacher at the Korbinian-Aigner-Gymnasium, had put some of the historical photos in large format on movable walls, as a reminder of the times for everyone.
FRIEDBERT HOLZ