08:00 - 22:30
Orbit, Königstor 33, Kassel
With a memorial event lasting more than fourteen hours, the Königstor Police Headquarters Memorial Initiative, together with the Kassel State Theater and the University of Kassel, commemorates the deportation of Kassel Jews.
The Kassel Gestapo office was responsible for the deportations of Jews from the Kassel administrative district to the concentration camp- and extermination camps. Am 11. November 1938 the first mass transport took place 696 male Jews in the Buchenwald concentration camp; they were usually released after a few weeks. From December 1941 until September 1943 deported the Gestapo altogether 2598 Jews of all ages in the concentration camps- and extermination camps in the East, only a few survived.
To the 87. On the anniversary of the first mass transport, each individual will call out their fate at the former Gestapo headquarters at Kassel's Königstor.
The action starts at 8 o'clock and ends after 14 hours around 22 Clock with a memorial prayer and music. Das Gebet to God full of mercy (The evil Rahamim) speak Annette Willisch and Jakob Axenrod. Es singt Elena Padva.
The event is sponsored by the Königstor Police Headquarters Memorial Initiative, the Kassel State Theater and the University of Kassel in cooperation with the Kassel Jewish Community, the Sara Nussbaum Center, the Jewish Liberal Community Region Kassel e.V. Emet weschalom and the Breitenau Memorial. The patron is the Hessian Minister for Science and Research, Art and culture, Timon Gremmels.
Gremmel's: “Reading out the names of the Jews deported from Kassel is a sign against forgetting. There is a person behind each name, a life with hopes, dream, The family, Friendships. And behind each of these names there is a crime, that destroyed this life. In a time, in which anti-Semitic slogans are becoming louder again and Jews feel increasingly threatened, our responsibility is clear: We have to look, name and act. Never again must hate gain the upper hand. Never look away again. Remembering the victims of National Socialism is an inseparable part of our democratic identity, because only those who recognize the past, can measure the value of freedom in our society and shape the future humanely.”
Over 1,000 people take part in the reading of the names 40 Citizens of Kassel, among them members of the Königstor Police Headquarters Memorial Initiative, the grandmas against the right, the Atonement/Peace Services campaign, the Kassel pier, the stumbling blocks in Kassel, of friends of Jewish life in the Werra-Meißner district, the German-Israeli Society, of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation Kassel, the Evangelical and Catholic Church, Actors and employees of the Kassel State Theater, the President of the University of Kassel Prof. Dr. Ute Clement, the chairwoman of the Kassel Jewish community Ilana Katz and others.