DACHAU CONCENTRATION CAMP
LIBERATORS & SURVIVORS
The 75th year since the Liberation of Dachau on 29th April 1945
The online Service of Remembrance for the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation on 29th April
In March all public services of remembrance for the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau concentration camp were cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Protestant Church of Reconciliation at the concentration camp memorial site received requests from Nick Hope (95), who survived Dachau and now lives in the USA, and from Jeremy Stuehmeyer in England, whose father Henry Stuehmeyer (1925-2018) was with his unit the 42nd Rainbow Division when they liberated the camp on 29th April 1945. They requested a recording of a service of remembrance for the 75th anniversary of the liberation, in English too. In this way the families of the survivors and liberators of the camp, who now live all over the world and would have liked to have visited Dachau for the anniversary, can have a digital presence at the site for this year’s commemorations.
The Church of Reconciliation will record a short ecumenical service on the 27th April. The church was consecrated in 1967 in the presence of survivors from several countries and is located on the actual site of the prisoner camp, not far from the crematorium. A Catholic chaplaincy is also active at the site. The professionally produced video will be published in both English and German versions on the 29th April 2020 at 5pm, the time at which, seventy-five years ago, over 32,000 men, women and children began to be liberated in Dachau. US soldiers reached them between 5 – 5.30pm that day.
Please find below the Youtube links, for todays very special 75th year Dachau Church service, recorded for you in both English and German, these will remain online for everybody to watch later.
At the core of our reflections are recollections of prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp. Sophie Aeckerle, a young student from Dachau currently studying at the Karlsruhe University of Music, will perform the Dachaulied by Jura Soyfer and Herbert Zipper during the service. Both left-wing Nazi opponents came from Jewish families and were sent to Dachau from Vienna in 1938.
Candles will be lit for the memories of Jura Soyfer – who did not live to see the liberation – the more than 41,500 people who died in Dachau’s murderous system of camps, and for all victims of National Socialism. We will also remember those allied soldiers who fell in the fight against Hitler’s Germany.
The Rev. Björn Mensing and Chaplain Ludwig Schmidinger, the representatives of the Protestant and Catholic churches for memorial site work, as well as Deacon Klaus Schultz, will read recollections of the liberation from Joseph Rovan (France) and Karl Adolf Groß (Germany).
The music performed by Sophie Aeckerle in German, English, Greek and Hebrew, links our commemoration and thankful remembrance of the liberation seventy-five years ago with our hopes that injustice, war and need might be overcome in our own day: We shall overcome.
In March all public services of remembrance for the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau concentration camp were cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Protestant Church of Reconciliation at the concentration camp memorial site received requests from Nick Hope (95), who survived Dachau and now lives in the USA, and from Jeremy Stuehmeyer in England, whose father Henry Stuehmeyer (1925-2018) was with his unit the 42nd Rainbow Division when they liberated the camp on 29th April 1945. They requested a recording of a service of remembrance for the 75th anniversary of the liberation, in English too. In this way the families of the survivors and liberators of the camp, who now live all over the world and would have liked to have visited Dachau for the anniversary, can have a digital presence at the site for this year’s commemorations.
The Church of Reconciliation will record a short ecumenical service on the 27th April. The church was consecrated in 1967 in the presence of survivors from several countries and is located on the actual site of the prisoner camp, not far from the crematorium. A Catholic chaplaincy is also active at the site. The professionally produced video will be published in both English and German versions on the 29th April 2020 at 5pm, the time at which, seventy-five years ago, over 32,000 men, women and children began to be liberated in Dachau. US soldiers reached them between 5 – 5.30pm that day.
Please find below the Youtube links, for todays very special 75th year Dachau Church service, recorded for you in both English and German, these will remain online for everybody to watch later.
At the core of our reflections are recollections of prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp. Sophie Aeckerle, a young student from Dachau currently studying at the Karlsruhe University of Music, will perform the Dachaulied by Jura Soyfer and Herbert Zipper during the service. Both left-wing Nazi opponents came from Jewish families and were sent to Dachau from Vienna in 1938.
Candles will be lit for the memories of Jura Soyfer – who did not live to see the liberation – the more than 41,500 people who died in Dachau’s murderous system of camps, and for all victims of National Socialism. We will also remember those allied soldiers who fell in the fight against Hitler’s Germany.
The Rev. Björn Mensing and Chaplain Ludwig Schmidinger, the representatives of the Protestant and Catholic churches for memorial site work, as well as Deacon Klaus Schultz, will read recollections of the liberation from Joseph Rovan (France) and Karl Adolf Groß (Germany).
The music performed by Sophie Aeckerle in German, English, Greek and Hebrew, links our commemoration and thankful remembrance of the liberation seventy-five years ago with our hopes that injustice, war and need might be overcome in our own day: We shall overcome.
The Dachau concentration camp 75th year Memorial service, performed at the Dachau Evangelical Church of Reconciliation, by Church Council Dr. Björn Mensing, pastor and historian
the Rev. Björn Mensing and Chaplain Ludwig Schmidinger, the representatives of the Protestant and Catholic churches for memorial site work, as well as Deacon Klaus Schultz, will read recollections of the liberation from Joseph Rovan (France)and Karl Adolf Groß (Germany), and music by Sophie Aeckerle.
Still images, by Axel Mölkner-Kappl.
the Rev. Björn Mensing and Chaplain Ludwig Schmidinger, the representatives of the Protestant and Catholic churches for memorial site work, as well as Deacon Klaus Schultz, will read recollections of the liberation from Joseph Rovan (France)and Karl Adolf Groß (Germany), and music by Sophie Aeckerle.
Still images, by Axel Mölkner-Kappl.
DACHAU 75th YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIBERATION CHURCH SERVICE
Dachau Church Service in English, short and long version:
https://youtu.be/Msb5TdEHL40
https://youtu.be/06FtoR-z20c
Dachau Church Service in German, short and long version:
https://youtu.be/-8nBYrZBq2c
https://youtu.be/DrOrmAIhvK8
DACHAU 75th YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIBERATION
CHURCH SERMONS
In English ~ Click here...
In German ~ Click here...
The Dachau Church service will be made available at www.bayern-evangelisch.de/75J.BefreiungDachau
and will remain online for people to watch later.
The Liberation of Dachau ~
Survivors and Liberators stories, photographs and artefacts.
Can you possibly help?
My aim is to try and find as many of the 32,000 Dachau Survivors, together with all of the Liberators, their children and families as well, from right around the world. But, as you can imagine this is quite some task and I need a great deal of help from everyone everywhere. So if you’re reading this and you know of someone with a ‘Dachau story’, then please get in touch with me today.
I’d also love to find all of the doctors and nurses who all cared so dearly for the survivors, the joiners, electricians and plumbers who between them rebuilt and adapted all of the buildings, into make-shift hospital rooms right around the camp. The individuals who supplied all of the new and used clothing for the Survivors. The cooks and the bakers too who amazingly baked thousands of bread loaves each day. Also where are all of the truck drivers who delivered the tons of bread each and every day to the camp?
In fact, I would love to hear from everyone who was at Dachau on and after Liberation Day, the 29th April 1945, including all those who cared for and looked after the Survivors in every way possible during the following months so that they could all go home.
~/~
Hundreds of photographs were taken during and after the Liberation. Original Dachau clothing, personal papers and treasured photographs, German military forms and letters, uniforms and items from the camp, some of these things might still be tucked away in drawers or in an attic somewhere. If you possibly have anything like this, then please do send me a photograph of the items.
Do you possibly have any treasured Dachau related items that you would very kindly like to donate to the Dachau camp museum, especially to keep them safe, if so then please get in touch with me, thank you.
I look forward to hearing from you.
CONTACT Jeremy Stuehmeyer ~ Click here...
Survivors and Liberators stories, photographs and artefacts.
Can you possibly help?
My aim is to try and find as many of the 32,000 Dachau Survivors, together with all of the Liberators, their children and families as well, from right around the world. But, as you can imagine this is quite some task and I need a great deal of help from everyone everywhere. So if you’re reading this and you know of someone with a ‘Dachau story’, then please get in touch with me today.
I’d also love to find all of the doctors and nurses who all cared so dearly for the survivors, the joiners, electricians and plumbers who between them rebuilt and adapted all of the buildings, into make-shift hospital rooms right around the camp. The individuals who supplied all of the new and used clothing for the Survivors. The cooks and the bakers too who amazingly baked thousands of bread loaves each day. Also where are all of the truck drivers who delivered the tons of bread each and every day to the camp?
In fact, I would love to hear from everyone who was at Dachau on and after Liberation Day, the 29th April 1945, including all those who cared for and looked after the Survivors in every way possible during the following months so that they could all go home.
~/~
Hundreds of photographs were taken during and after the Liberation. Original Dachau clothing, personal papers and treasured photographs, German military forms and letters, uniforms and items from the camp, some of these things might still be tucked away in drawers or in an attic somewhere. If you possibly have anything like this, then please do send me a photograph of the items.
Do you possibly have any treasured Dachau related items that you would very kindly like to donate to the Dachau camp museum, especially to keep them safe, if so then please get in touch with me, thank you.
I look forward to hearing from you.
CONTACT Jeremy Stuehmeyer ~ Click here...
Dachau concentration camp.
From the 22nd March 1933 onwards more than 200,000 people from over 34 different countries were brought to Dachau and its later outer camps. The camp was one of the first to be built and became a model for future places of SS terror. The first prisoners were German Communists, members of the Social Democratic Party, and other opponents of the Nazis. Later the regime also sent Jews, Sinti and Roma communities, homosexuals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses to Dachau, as well as those who were labelled as ‘asocial’ and ‘career criminals’.
From 1938 on the Nazis deported people from all parts of Germany and the occupied territories to Dachau’s system of camps. The largest national group were the more than 40,700 prisoners from Poland, followed by the prisoners from Germany, the USSR, Hungary and France. There were also British and US citizens in Dachau, as well as prisoners from other countries beyond Europe.
Every fourth prisoner in Dachau was persecuted for their Jewish identity. The rest of the prisoners were atheists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christians of various denominations, Muslims, or followers of other religions or beliefs.
More information
www.comiteinternationaldachau.com www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de www.versoehnungskirche-dachau.de www.gedenkstaettenseelsorge.de
Kirchenrat Dr. Björn Mensing, Pfarrer und Historiker
Landeskirchlicher Beauftragter für evangelische Gedenkstättenarbeit
der Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern
Evangelische Versöhnungskirche in der KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau
Alte Römerstraße 87 85221 Dachau
Tel: 00 49 (0) 8131 272601
[email protected]
www.versoehnungskirche-dachau.de
Dachau Liberators.
Please contact Jeremy Stuehmeyer if your father or grandfather was one of the Liberators of Dachau.
[email protected]
Tel: 00 44 (0) 1423 330560 (UK)
www.jsfamilytrees.com/dachau-liberators--survivors.html
Kirchenrat Dr. Björn Mensing, Pfarrer und Historiker. 29th April, 2020.
From the 22nd March 1933 onwards more than 200,000 people from over 34 different countries were brought to Dachau and its later outer camps. The camp was one of the first to be built and became a model for future places of SS terror. The first prisoners were German Communists, members of the Social Democratic Party, and other opponents of the Nazis. Later the regime also sent Jews, Sinti and Roma communities, homosexuals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses to Dachau, as well as those who were labelled as ‘asocial’ and ‘career criminals’.
From 1938 on the Nazis deported people from all parts of Germany and the occupied territories to Dachau’s system of camps. The largest national group were the more than 40,700 prisoners from Poland, followed by the prisoners from Germany, the USSR, Hungary and France. There were also British and US citizens in Dachau, as well as prisoners from other countries beyond Europe.
Every fourth prisoner in Dachau was persecuted for their Jewish identity. The rest of the prisoners were atheists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christians of various denominations, Muslims, or followers of other religions or beliefs.
More information
www.comiteinternationaldachau.com www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de www.versoehnungskirche-dachau.de www.gedenkstaettenseelsorge.de
Kirchenrat Dr. Björn Mensing, Pfarrer und Historiker
Landeskirchlicher Beauftragter für evangelische Gedenkstättenarbeit
der Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern
Evangelische Versöhnungskirche in der KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau
Alte Römerstraße 87 85221 Dachau
Tel: 00 49 (0) 8131 272601
[email protected]
www.versoehnungskirche-dachau.de
Dachau Liberators.
Please contact Jeremy Stuehmeyer if your father or grandfather was one of the Liberators of Dachau.
[email protected]
Tel: 00 44 (0) 1423 330560 (UK)
www.jsfamilytrees.com/dachau-liberators--survivors.html
Kirchenrat Dr. Björn Mensing, Pfarrer und Historiker. 29th April, 2020.
Here are a number of photographs taken at Dachau this week, very kindly taken by the Rev. Dr Bjorn Mensing, whilst he attended his church at Dachau...
