Is Mr. Mehdorn an Anti-Semite?

Jewish communities in Saarbruecken, Karlsruhe and Berlin - in their own events or in collaboration with the "Initiative Eleven Thousand Children" - demanded Saturday an immediate end to the boycott policy of the DB executive committee. The company leadership, under Hartmut Mehdorn, refuses to permit an appropriate memorial for the deported and to allow the international organizations of victims, as well as the German citizens' initiatives, to participate directly.[1] This boycott which places the memorial at the discretion of the DB, is explicitly approved by the Minister of Transport, Wolfgang Tiefensee (SPD).[2] The Minister "is unable to prevail over Mehdorn" according to members of the Transportation Committee of the German Parliament (Bundestag). Several members of the Bundestag have repeatedly sought to bring up the question of Mehdorn's historical policies and expect Tiefensee to end the delaying tactics.

Declined

The conflict seems to spread, after Mehdorn was forced to give in to past protests and entrusted, the director of the "rail traffic" section of the Technical Museum of Berlin, Alfred Gottwald, of all people, with a commissioned exhibit. Instead of immediately beginning with the memorial, as the citizens' initiatives are doing, this exhibition is supposed to be opened only next year. It draws on pieces on loan from the exhibit in the Railroad Museum in Nuremberg, where the aspects of the deportation are treated from an organizational -technical standpoint and totally insufficiently. Above all the presentation does not do justice to the deportation from the perspective of its victims.[3] The tens of thousands of children, in particular, who were freighted with the "Reichsbahn" to their deaths, receive no specific attention. Therefore, Serge Klarsfeld, the historian from Paris, declined participation in this unqualified project sponsored by the railroad.

European-wide

The dispute is having repercussions. In the meantime, historians have pointed out that research and a representation of German deportations by rail, in which Jewish children fell victim, has been carried out only in France. The European dimension (the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Greece as well as Eastern and Southeastern Europe) remain obscured. The exact number of the approximately three million children, who were deported by train, remains unknown. Thus far none of the "Reichsbahn" successor institutions have bothered with the history of these people, let alone found it necessary to publicly pay tribute. The Ministry of Transport, being the final authority, regularly defers to Mehdorn, denying its own responsibility. This game of hide-and-seek could lead to unpleasant consequences for more than just the Tiefensee ministry, if a European-wide discussion of the "Reichsbahn" deportations gets underway. The Foreign Ministry will also be effected.

Rolling Memorial

The events last Saturday have heralded this European interest. Particularly the protests at the Berlin Central Station [4] were covered by the foreign press. Ironically the Minister of Transport, Tiefensee, was also invited to participate in the protests. With several tens of thousands of leaflets and in the presence of the press, the travelers in and outside the stations in Halle, Erfurt, Leipzig, Aachen, Karlsruhe, Goettingen, Cologne, Mannheim and Siegen were informed.[5] On the Rhine Main regional rail lines the passengers were given an opportunity to discuss with representatives of the citizens' initiatives. They reminded passengers in the trains of the deported with photos. TV channels showed interest In these rolling events. "We hope that the DB will not disturb this memorial event", said Dr. Dietrich Schulze from Karlsruhe, before the protest began. He represents the local initiators.

Honors

The "Memory Train" in Würzburg received special attention. After the memorial services were prevented from taking place in the station for more than two years, they have now taken place - on track eleven in two historical railroad cars, pulled by a steam engine locomotive and shuttled between Wuerzburg and Schweinfurt. By renting the cars and legally reserving the route, the organizers circumvented Mehdorns boycott on the memorials. Throughout the period of preparation at the station, they have domestic authority over the departure platform of Wuerzburg's central station, and they publicly paid tribute to the deported. Wuerzburg's school classes and citizens were invited to come along for the free ride, accompanied by lectures and discussions for all, who would like to become acquainted with documents about the deportations by rail of the Main-Franconian Jews. Exhibits on the eleven thousand Jewish children, who were freighted from France to the extermination camps, were also available on the "Memory Train". (Photos: The deportation of the Main-Franconian Jews were carried out at Wuerzburg's Aumuehle station, without the arrests and kidnappings being concealed. Wuerzburg's passers-by looked on, as the people - some of whom, they may have personally known, wearing Stars of David and carrying their final hand luggage - boarded and were sent on their journey "to the East".)

Museum

The refusal of the railway director to appropriately pay tribute to these children with exhibitions at German stations has already been a theme of discussion over the past year in the Jewish religious community in Wuerzburg. The chairman, Dr. Josef Schuster, asked in a public meeting for the victims of the Nazis, about the motives that could explain the persisting boycott, over years, by the company's director. "Is (...) Mr. Mehdorn an anti-Semite?," was the rhetorical question posed by Dr. Schuster, which he proceeded to answer with differentiation.[6] "I don't think so", concluded the representative of that municipality, from whose ranks 2,000 of the deported were among the victims. "With this behavior, he (Mehdorn) embodies, a widespread attitude prevalent in sectors of this population, who feel they've heard enough about this segment of German history, who believe that history belongs in the museum."

Reminder

"No, one cannot rid oneself of his history by concealment. And one honors the victims, by paying tribute to them."(Schuster).

Please read also our EXTRA dossier Elftausend Kinder.

[1] Please read also our EXTRA dossier Elftausend Kinder.
[2] Gemeinsame Erklärung des Bundesministers für Verkehr und des Bahnvorsitzenden vom 01.12.2006
[3], [4] see also Erhebliches Aktienrisiko
[5] You can find the flyer here.
[6] Dr. Josef Schuster: Keiner konnte sagen, er habe nichts gewusst. Rede zum 09. November 2006. In: Gedenken an die Deportation der Juden. Gemeinschaft Sant' Egidio, 2007