April 1945: Wöbbelin, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania

“This was the worst camp of all.”

Ten-year-old students who visit a concentration camp and, despite their age, work there and learn a great deal? A small concentration camp in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where over one thousand people died in the short space of its existence? The history of Wöbbelin concentration camp is unusual and horrifying; the presence of the Memorial is also unusual, but encouraging.

Wöbbelin concentration camp existed for just ten weeks. No prisoner who was held there will introduce himself as a former prisoner of Wöbbelin. He will say: “I was a prisoner in Auschwitz, in Neuengamm, in Majdanek.” All of the people imprisoned in Wöbbelin had already trailed through several camps and endured numerous death marches and transports: men and women, all of whom unanimously agree: “This was the worst camp of all.” These were the words of Joshua Laks at this year’s memorial ceremony in Wöbbelin, who had already endured ten concentration camps before arriving there. Erich Kary, who had previously been imprisoned in Auschwitz, Dora-Mittelbau and Ravensbrück, recounts: “It must have been the end of April 1945 when the train halted in a small wood and we were driven yet again from the wagons. Many could hardly move their limbs, it was the same with me. We were already somewhat apathetic, we been subjugated to brutal oppression, and were relieved not to be met with an immediate beating. We were driven on foot through a section woods and arrived at a shack … or rather a stone building with gaping holes as windows and doors, no floor, just sand … Wöbbelin was the worst place I had experienced. It was absolute chaos. Even though there were no gas chambers here, the people died from disease, they starved, died of thirst. There were dead people everywhere. I’d somehow managed to survive Auschwitz, where people were systematically exterminated, and even the conditions in Monowitz concentration camp. It had been worse in Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. But Wöbbelin was worse than ever. This concetration camp was so totally overcrowded that there was hardly anything to eat, let alone drink. There were dead or dying people everywhere, and you didn’t know when you would become one of them yourself.”

Wöbbelin had actually been planned as a labour camp. The first prisoners were brought there in February to construct the camp. But when the front started to disintegrate everywhere at the beginning of April and the Allies were advancing, death marches and transports arrived at Wöbbelin from throughout the German Reich. The already frail prisoners discovered a camp that was utterly unprepared for them in every respect.

The barbed-wire fence and watch towers had been completed, but the stone barracks had no doors or windows and, above all, no heating. Many of the prisoners had to sleep on the bare floor. There was one kilogram of bread for ten prisoners and half a litre of soup for each. Water was available from a single pump, but it was polluted. Former prisoners report that the people who drank from the water fell ill.

Erich Kary remembers: “There was no path to the latrines or the washroom. If you managed to get there, you discovered that the so-called washroom was full of corpses. The way back was littered with bodies as well ... The conditions were abominable, many prisoners were too weak to get up and go to the latrine ... We lay down and had no idea what would happen next. You thought to yourself: will a miracle happen? Will you survive? Where will it go from here?”

As a result, about one thousand people died during these last weeks in Wöbbelin. When the Americans liberated the camp they were horrified. Nothing had prepared them for this. The National Socialists had kept these people in their power literally to the last moment, contrary to all reason, contrary to all humanity. This is why the American soldiers wanted to confront the German population with this crime. All of Wöbbelin’s inhabitants had to go and look at the camp, and the men had to help bury the dead victims.

Did this help to change the population’s attitudes? It seems to have had the opposite effect. Wöbbelin never actively came to terms with what had happened. There was a small memorial with an annual ceremony in May. That was all. But after the fall of the Wall a society was founded to develop the memorial. Its mission was to thoroughly research the history of Wöbbelin.

At the same time right-wing extremism was on the increase in the rural district of Ludwigslust. The NPD seemed to be present everywhere. It tried, and still tries, to attract especially young people with its activities. In answer to this, an unusual educational project has started at the Wöbbelin Memorial, designed to include even young primary school children. Many people think that visits by ten or eleven-year-olds to a concentration camp memorial breaks a taboo. Can they cope with it?

“The trouble is,“ responds Ramona Ramesenthaler, head of the memorial centre, “waiting until the children are fourteen or fifteen before talking about it causes a dangerous delay. It could well be too late for them in an environment that is full of right-wing prejudice.” Erich Kary, who still tirelessly meets with school classes says: “We don’t want to leave the way clear for the right-wing extremists. The students don’t see the project as an unwelcome imposition, but as enrichment.

They are carefully prepared for the visit, as described by Nadine Lemke, head of Gammelin Primary School. In fourth grade the children read the book “Der überaus starke Willibald” (The exceedingly strong Willibald) by Willi Fährmann. The title character is the self-appointed leader of a swarm of mice and threatens them with the cat, if they don’t do what he says. A single mouse opposes him and is consequently excluded – a parable of the Nazi dictatorship. In addition to this the children ask family members about the Nazi years. The climax is the visit to the memorial centre. Again, the main aim is to show how it could happen that so many people died here, and what intolerance can lead to. The results are surprising: “I thought it was good that we didn’t argue with 4b for the first time,” a young boy wrote in his first impressions following the visit. Even the youngest children are integrated into the project. The teachers rehearsed the musical project “Vierfarbenland” (Four Colour Land) with the first and second grade children, and it was performed at the event marking the liberation of Wöbbelin. It plays in a world full of borders. The greens live in one part of the land, the reds in another, here are the yellows and there are the blues. The parents talk their children into believing this is the way it should be, chanting such things as “Yellow is bad, yellow is bad.” But there’s one little boy, Erb, who really likes one of the yellow girls, and when a yellow flower starts to grow in green land and is about to be stamped out, he doesn’t think that’s good either. At the end the children tear down the borders: now they are all wearing white T-shirts with red, blue, green and yellow hands. The survivors were enthralled by the performance. Joshua Laks would have liked to take the whole group back with him to Yad Vashem to show how it’s possible to work on such a difficult theme with such young children.

And the parents? They were proud of their children’s achievement and curious to hear about the history of the survivors, whom many of the parents were meeting for the first time at the ceremony. And so, the children taught their parents something too, entirely in the spirit of the story they had performed.

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