Resistance and Persecution

Today I walked all the way from the beautiful sculpture dedicated to Georg Elser (who tried to kill Hitler with a bomb in 1938), via the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europa, the Memorials to Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism, the Memorial to Europe's Sinti and Roma Murdered under Nazism, the Soviet War Memorial Tiergarten, to the Memorial and Information Place for the Victims of the National-Socialist 'Euthanasia' Murders. I always find that the Euthanasia murders (like the Bebelplatz monument) deserve more attention and a more impressive and respectful monument. Not only because much of the Euthanasia program's 'expertise' and many of its perpetrators seamlessly were transferred to Poland to carry out the most lethal part of the Holocaust, but also because the stories of that program's victims are incredibly moving and sad. 


















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A little bit about myself

Image
My name is Yonathan Bar-On (Bert de Bruin). Born and raised in the Netherlands, I have lived in Israel since 1992. I am a historian and a columnist for the Dutch daily Friesch Dagblad, and I have been teaching English at the high school of the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa, Israel for the last 15 years. In my classes, besides the English high school curriculum, I usually have time to do extracurricular projects. I have developed class projects (often using material provided by Centropa ) on topics like human rights, refugees, Holocaust, migration, and resistance in Nazi-Germany. You can get an impression of those and other projects by clicking here . I've participated in Centropa seminars in Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, Sarajevo, and Prague. With two different Ukrainian schools, in 2024 and 2025 I did a project titled 'Comfort Food in Times of War', in which our students shared experiences from the wars in their country and made videos about dishes that helped them cope ...
Read more

The Man in the Clouds - A trilingual book for interreligious and intercultural dialogue and education

Image
This project will be the main focus during my stay in Berlin. It started in 2016 as an idea for a workshop in Stuttgart for Palestinian and Israeli teachers: to have Israeli, Palestinian and German students translate a Dutch children's book into Arabic, Hebrew and German, get a trilingual, fully illustrated edition of the book published, and use that book in Israeli, Palestinian and German elementary schools. The book was written by Koos Meinderts and Annette Fienieg, whose permission to use the text and illustrations I asked and received before I started working on the project. The book is  The Man in the Clouds (De man in de wolken) , and it deals with the importance of giving, sharing, accepting the other, and the dangers of greed and materialism. Its main themes are universal, which together with the beautiful illustrations makes the book a great tool for intercultural and interreligious dialogue and education. I teach English at the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa, and fou...
Read more

One project finished - A Practical Guide to Memorials of Persecution and Resistance in and around Berlin

Image
 The first (though secondary) of the two projects that I worked on during my time in Berlin has been finished successfully. It is a practical guide for anybody who is in Berlin and wants to visit one or more of the 69 memorials and museums that appear in the guide. It includes a useful guide with a basic description, links to a website (for most sites) and the location in Google maps, plus information about opening hours etc. where relevant. The guide is called 'To Warn and Remember' and you can find it here . My cooperative project with House of One is in an advanced stage. I'm waiting for feedback and input from my Berlin colleagues, as soon as I have that (before the end of the month, I assume) I will finish, publish, and share the learning units based on 'The Man in the Clouds' .
Read more