Foundation director calls for help for Nazi survivors

Created: 03/21/2022Updated: 03/21/2022 15:23

Axel Drecoll speaks in the Potsdam State Chancellery.

© Annette Riedl/dpa/image archive

The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine also has an impact on the work of the Memorial Foundation.

For example, eyewitnesses to the Nazi crimes cannot come to the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp.

On top of that, the scientific work-up is impaired.

Potsdam - The director of the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation, Axel Drecoll, has called for support for the elderly survivors of the Nazi concentration camps from Ukraine.

These should be invited to the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück concentration camps, but now they have to hide in basements and subway stations and fear for their lives because of the war, Drecoll said on Monday.

So far, the foundation has only been able to reach a few of them.

"One of them is 95-year-old Volodymyr Kororbov in Kyiv, for whose support a fundraising campaign was launched," said the director of the foundation.

Kororbov needs 200 to 300 euros a month for medicine and food, said Culture Minister Manja Schüle (SPD).

After the Sachsenhausen Committee had appealed for donations, a good 3,800 euros had already been received.

The 95-year-old wanted to arrive at the end of April for the anniversary of the liberation, but not as a war refugee, said Schüle.

It is therefore still uncertain whether Kororbow can come.

The director of the Ravensbrück memorial, Andrea Genest, reported on a survivor of the concentration camp who, for health reasons, could no longer leave her apartment on the 9th floor in Kyiv.

You could at least transfer financial support.

According to Drecoll, the foundation has contact with a total of 32 survivors, 7 of whom have agreed to participate as eyewitnesses.

Along with around 30 other initiatives, memorial sites and museums, the foundation is also involved in an aid network for other victims of Nazi persecution in Ukraine.

Around 42,000 survivors of Nazi camps and persecution measures were still living there, according to the aid network's call for donations.

Among them are mainly Ukrainians who were kidnapped together with their parents for forced labor in Germany or who were born in Nazi camps, said a spokeswoman.

According to Drecoll, the war in the Ukraine has also had a negative impact on academic research into Nazi crimes.

In June, for example, there should be an international conference to mark the anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

This was planned with many scientists from Eastern Europe, including Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.

This conference must now take place in a different form, said Drecoll.

“We also notice that there are colleagues in Russia who are subject to repression.

Our thoughts should be with them too.”

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In the future, the Jamlitz-Lieberose memorial is also to become part of the memorial foundation.

In the satellite camp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, around 10,000 mostly Jewish prisoners from all occupied European countries had to do forced labor under inhumane conditions.

Shortly before the camp was liquidated in February 1945, the SS murdered more than 1,300 prisoners.

From 1945 to 1947 the Soviet special camp Jamlitz was located there.

The state is supporting the work of the foundation this year with more than 3.9 million euros, with a further 3.7 million euros coming from the federal government.

Last year, around 139,000 people visited the foundation's memorials and museums under corona conditions.

dpa