TRAIN OF REMEMBRANCE recalls transportations to Nazi death camps – German government refuses support

In Germany a “Train of Remembrance” has been travelling throughout the country since November 2007 and plans are in place for this journey to continue throughout 2009. The train is a memorial to all the one million children who were transported by the Nazis from all corners of the conquered countries in the early1940s to their deaths in extermination or concentration camps in the East, mainly Poland. Those meticulously ordered transportations were coordinated and carried out with teutonic efficiency by the then Reichsbahn (Imperial Railway).

In Britain we have just recalled the Kindertransport of Jewish children from Germany organised by the British Government and Jewish Groups in 1938. Prince Charles met the survivors, most of whose parents died in the Nazi camps after they had put their children on the train to Britain. But there has been no such support from the German Government for the Train of Remembrance.

This German Train of Remembrance has so far stopped at some 70 stations, usually for at least 3 days in each town where an exhibition is mounted honouring the dead and remembering the evil of the Nazi period. But all this has been done without the support of the German Government and without any help from the State Railway corporation Deutsche Bahn (successor to the Reichsbahn) both of which refused to provide any services nor to make a donation. The German Transport Ministry also refused to help. And all this has had to be financed by voluntary subscription. And the costs have been high since the Deutsche Bahn AG has demanded Euro 3.50 for every kilometer travelled and Euro45 for every hour of remembrance at a station! Further charges have been made for the locomotive, for parking the wagons overnight, route planning and so on.

The original death trains went through all the great cities of Germany and Austria – Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt, Dresden etc. Often they travelled in daylight and even as part of the normal traffic, even on occasion attached to normal passenger trains. On the routes to the extermination camps the imprisoned would throw out cards and letters desperately calling for help

But the greatest scandal is that even today the German political class has sought to ignore and marginalize this act of remembrance. The German ruling parties have brought this commemoration of the children of Europe to nought.

On Thursday 20th November 2008 the German government parties- the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) together with the Social Democrats(SPD) turned down all requests for support of “The Train of Remembrance”. This caused the request to the parliamentary budget committee by the Alliance 90 Group/Greens to fail. MP Katrin Goering-Eckhart, Vice President of the German Parliament had proposed that the planned journey by the “Train of Remembrance” should be supported from taxpayers’ funds on its coming journey through Europe.

The motion to fund the train was supported by the Free Democrats (FDP), the Alliance 90/The Greens and the Party of the Left. The government parties voted against. Even a token demand for a few euros’ support for the “Train of Remembrance” was denied debate by the government parties. In contrast, ample funds are available to celebrate the achievements of Prussia (by the Otto von Bismarck Foundation) or the German past in today’s Poland (The East Prussian Provincial Museum). Funds for a “German Peace and Unity Memorial”, to stand on the plinth of a former statue of the Kaiser, were tripled in last Thursday’s meeting of the budget committee – from 5 million to 15 million euros.

The German Ministry of Transport, which is responsible for railways, was able to increase its budget by 1 billion euros and received additional expenditure authorisations of 4 billion euros. The ministry is the historical successor of the Reich Transport Ministry of the National Socialist era, an active accomplice with the Reichsbahn (German state railways) in the mass deportations. A request for support for the most recent commemoration of the victims of this deportation on Oranienberg station (near to the former Nazi concentration camp at Sachsenhausen) was turned down by the ministry on 22 October.

The veto by the CDU/CSU and SPD stands in stark contradiction to undertakings by numerous representatives of these parties who were previously strong supporters of the “Train of Remembrance” at local and provincial level. In the past several CDU prime ministers were strong supporters of this citizens’ initiative. This support left the Federal Chancellery unimpressed. Not a cent was available from the office of the resident Minister of State for Culture and Media (Bernd Neumann – CDU/CSU) to commemorate over 1 million deported children from the countries occupied by Germany.