Remembrance

Until well into the 1960s, it was the few survivors who decided to return to Germany that tried to keep alive the memory of persecution and murder.

Most contemporaries remained silent, some out of guilt, some out of shame, some out of indifference. In Baden, some communities came together at the end of the 1950s to care for the Gurs cemetery. Eventually, local initiatives worked to keep the memory alive, and over the decades they reconstructed much of what was meant to be forgotten or that had been lost through the silence of generations.

© Stadtarchiv Emmendingen, Städtische Bildersammlung
Photo by an unknown photographer, 18.1.1948

With the help of the Association of those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime (VVN), Rolf Weinstock was able to consecrate a memorial stone at the Emmendingen cemetery on the 18th of January 1948. This had been vandalised with a swastika just the day before. In 1951, the stone was once again defiled and toppled over. One year later, Rolf Weinstock died from long-term consequences of persecution. Regular memorial services have taken place here since the 1970s.
Rolf Weinstock, "The True Face of Hitler’s Germany", 1948, Singen

Rolf Weinstock was one of the few people transported to Gurs who survived the persecution, the deportation and the concentration camp. His memoirs appeared with permission from the French occupation authorities as early as 1948. As a prefix to his book, Weinstock included a remarkable message: “Everything that I and my comrades in misery have suffered and endured we will tolerate, as if it were our destiny – if the German people draw the lessons from it that they must learn.” The book did not receive a wide circulation.

© Badische Volkszeitung
“Have the Jews of Baden been forgotten?”, 10.8.1957

After this report on the conditions of the Gurs cemetery was published in 1957, the mayor of Karlsruhe, Günther Klotz, took the initiative to restore it. Supported by the upper council for Israelites of Baden, the cemetery was restored in 1961 and newly consecrated in 1963. Since then, it has been cared for by the Committee for the Maintenance and Care of the Cemetery of the Deported in Gurs. This committee is made up of 16 towns in Baden and the district association of the Palatinate (Bezirksverband Pfalz).

As late as the 1980s, detailed information on the persecution and murder of Jews in one’s own region was hard to find. Nevertheless, local initiatives in many areas of the Federal Republic of Germany had already begun researching the history of the Jewish community and the fates of the persecuted. During the next years and decades, memorial books and local studies began to appear which now make up an important component of today’s scholarly research. This request for information arose as part of research for the exhibition Zehn statt tausend Jahre (ten years instead of a thousand), which opened in Saarbrücken castle in 1989. <br /> <br /> Letter by the council of Saarbrücken to the Centre of Deportation, 21.10.1987
© Mémorial de la Shoah, DCXVII-2
As late as the 1980s, detailed information on the persecution and murder of Jews in one’s own region was hard to find. Nevertheless, local initiatives in many areas of the Federal Republic of Germany had already begun researching the history of the Jewish community and the fates of the persecuted. During the next years and decades, memorial books and local studies began to appear which now make up an important component of today’s scholarly research. This request for information arose as part of research for the exhibition Zehn statt tausend Jahre (ten years instead of a thousand), which opened in Saarbrücken castle in 1989.

Letter by the council of Saarbrücken to the Centre of Deportation, 21.10.1987
Letter by the council of Saarbrücken to the Centre of Deportation, 21.10.1987
© Mémorial de la Shoah, DCXVII-2
Letter by the council of Saarbrücken to the Centre of Deportation, 21.10.1987