"Fellheim Station Memorial Site" officially opened

Created: 07/30/2022, 13:15

By: Tom Otto

Initiator and project sponsor Albrecht Schwedass decorated the new memorial sculpture created by Agnes Keil and Peter Heel with flowers.

© Tom Otto

Fellheim - The old and no longer used train station in Fellheim was officially opened to the public last Wednesday as part of the German culture of remembrance.

The Fellheim station memorial was sold privately in 2019.

As a private initiative, the new owner Albrecht Schwedass initiated the establishment of the “Fellheim train station memorial site”.

At the well-attended opening ceremony, the metal sculpture created especially for this location was unveiled and presented to the general public.

The work of art with the distinctive suitcase and two steles was created by Agnes Keil and Peter Heel and is now on the outside of the site.

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Veronika Heilmannseder, historian and curator of the project, who took over the scientific management, showed a keen sense on this special day.

Before the official opening of the project, she offered the guests a "remembrance march" from the former synagogue in Fellheim to the old train station.

Many visitors got involved and could not escape the oppressive atmosphere on the way to the former "deportation station".

A new memorial for people who were kidnapped and murdered by the Nazi regime is being created with the “Fellheim train station memorial site”.

He also refers to people who fled and left their home in Fellheim because of Nazi persecution and emigrated.

An important piece of Swabian and Bavarian history becomes tangible here.

Curator Heilmannseder made the time almost come alive again through very concrete descriptions of the people and conditions at that time.

The trains passing Fellheim station on the railway line that was still in use were not from the Reichsbahn,

but they also created a spooky scenario. The historic Fellheim train station on the former Illerbahn from Kempten to Ulm was the starting point for two group deportations of Jewish people from Memmingen and Fellheim in 1942. The journey to National Socialist concentration camps began for 37 people via the Fellheim train station - and extermination camps in the east.

Five men who were married to non-Jewish women and who were ghettoized in Fellheim were taken from there to Theresienstadt in 1944 and 1945.

Further historical research on the Jewish history of Swabia was initiated here and is to be located at the old train station in the future.

Future results will then also flow into a new station "Bahnhof" of the cultural-historical history trail through the former Jewish-Christian "double village of Fellheim".

The project, which is unique in Swabia, has already been selected as part of the national festival year "1700 years of Jewish life in Germany" and was awarded by the Bavarian Anti-Semitism Commissioner Dr.

Ludwig Spänle certified as a role model across the country.

The celebration was framed with sensitive music by clarinettist Helmut Eisel and the Swiss string quartet "casalQuartett".

Patron of the “Fellheim train station as a place of remembrance” is former Minister of State Josef Miller (Memmingen).

The project is funded by the Bavarian Ministry of Education, the European LEADER program, the district office of Unterallgäu, the district of Swabia and the city of Memmingen, as well as the association Cultura Kulturveranstaltungen eV