Home » News » Installation for victims of the Holocaust in Dresden | Culture | DW

Installation for victims of the Holocaust in Dresden | Culture | DW

On the night of November 9-10, 1938, Nazi thugs set fire to Jewish shops and synagogues. Homes and shops were ransacked, and scores of people were arrested, beaten and killed. The Reichspogromnacht was the prelude to the largest genocide in Europe. Now an interactive work of art in Dresden is to commemorate the event.

The installation “Disappearing Wall” Unites quotes from survivors of the Buchenwald, Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps and their satellite camps on 6000 wooden blocks. With its opening on the morning of November 9th, the victims of the Holocaust and the Reichspogromnacht will be commemorated. The Saxon state capital Dresden, the Goethe Institute and the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation invite you to the Golden Gate of the New Town Hall in Dresden.

Messages from the survivors

The “Disappearing Wall” goes back to an idea of ​​the Russian student Maria Jablonina. The installation was dated Goethe Institute First realized in Moscow in 2013 on the anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. As a result, she stood on different occasions in different places, including four Israeli cities. In 2020, the installation was on view in 16 European cities, including Vilnius, Belfast, Thessaloniki and Madrid, as part of the federal government’s official cultural program for the German EU Council Presidency. The “Vanishing Wall” was in an adapted form as part of the 76th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps in Weimar in April 2021 and in Dresden in November 2021.

Wall of Remembrance: 6000 wooden blocks with quotes from Holocaust survivors

The visitors to the installation are invited to pull out the quotation blocks, read them and take them with them. The wall empties and finally disappears completely, but the messages of almost 100 Holocaust survivors are carried on. Among them are well-known personalities such as Imre Kertész, Stéphane Hessel or Eugen Kogon – and many others who are not in the public eye. Your quotes are partly personal experiences, partly reflections on what the Shoah means for the future coexistence of people.

Common memory

Johannes Ebert, Secretary General of the Goethe Institute, said in the run-up to the opening: “There are fewer and fewer witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust who can report on their experiences To pass on survivors to future generations. ” The new centers for international cultural education, which will be opened at five Goethe Institutes in Germany, will play a central role, according to Ebert. Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said of the upcoming commemorative events in Dresden: “Remembering together is also a prerequisite for good coexistence in Germany, today and in the future.”

Dresden’s Lord Mayor Dirk Hilbert will open the memorial event on November 9th, followed by speeches by Dr. Nora Goldenbogen, Chairwoman of the Saxony State Association of Jewish Communities, Johannes Ebert and Prof. Dr. Jens-Christian Wagner, Director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation. The installation will be shown again on November 29th – at a ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the Goethe-Institut.

pj / nf (with goethe.de)

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