Antifascist meeting in commemoration of May 8, 1945 in Esterwegen (Germany)

On May 10 about 300 German and Dutch antifascists met at the Esterwegen memorial in commemoration of 8th May 1945 and the victims of fascism.

The Esterwegen concentration camp was one of 15 camps that was built in the remote wasteland area of Emsland on the border with the Netherlands. In the first period of Nazi fascism it was mostly members of the German workers' parties and unions who were brought here to cultivate the peat bogs. They had to work under terrible conditions and were often treated worse than animals by the SS and SA guards. Later prisoners tried by court martial, "criminals" according to the spirits of the Nazi laws, members of the Resistance movements of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg and France, as well as Polish and Soviet prisoners of war, were detained in the camps.

This year former prisoners of the camps, the so called Peat-Bog Soldiers, and Polish POWs took part in the meeting.

The German peace activist Ellen Rohlfs, who is a member of the German-Palestine Society and of Gush Shalom, read her poem "6 Million" in which she points out that we often just talk about the people killed in the camps in numbers but we neglect the individual fates of the more than 6 million victims of the fascist barbarities.

Gusta Olivier-Vonk from the Netherlands who fought against the German occupation (1940-45) as a young girl accused US imperialism's policies of striving for world hegemony. After the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq G. W. Bush has announced his intention to attack other countries, which he described as "rogue states". She warned against going to war with North Korea as this might lead to a third world war. She appealed to the audience and especially to the youth to continue the fight according to the spirit of the victims of fascism and to oppose the goals of US imperialism.

The former "Peat Bog Soldier" Hans Lauter told the audience about how the prisoners were harassed by the guards who tried to humiliate them day after day to finally destroy them mentally and physically. Surviving was often only possible by helping each other. "A piece of bread, a kind word sometimes helped us to get through a difficult personal crisis," Lauter remembered from his own experience. He, is now chairman of the Association of Victims of Persecution during the Nazi Regime in Saxony (VVN-BdA). At the end he thanked everybody, including his dead comrades for the solidarity he received in the Emsland camps.

The meeting was accompanied by musical offerings from the choir "La Lega" and poems read by the lyricist Kai Engelke.

Tony Kofoet,

May 18, 2003.