"Silent Heroes, Living Memory" in Berlin

This project focuses of ways of preserving the stories of Jews in hiding during World War II and is largely based upon the exchange of experiences of foreign partner organisations. In addition to the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, organisation from the Netherlands, Austria, Germany and Hungary also took part.

An ongoing benefit resulting from the event will be a shared online educational tool dedicated to stories from the five participating countries. This has been made possible by financial support from the European Commission (Grundtvig Program).

Host of the gathering in Berlin was the Silent Heroes Memorial Centre (Gedenkstätte Stille Helden). During the three-day conference, participants visited sites where, in Germany, Jews had been helped by civilians and also by the German resistance movement.

Participants visited the Jewish Museum (Jüdisches Museum Berlin), the Silent Heroes Memorial Centre (Gedenkstätte Stille Helden), the Museum Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt, as well as the German Resistance Centre (Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand). Some also visited the Anne Frank Centre and the synagogue.

They also visted sites of Jewish cemeteries which had been destroyed during the War, monuments dedicated to Jews, homosexuals and Roma who had been murdered and also places commemorating the suffering of Jews transported to the East.

The Gedenkstätte Stille Heldenis on Rosenthaler Straβe. That local neighbourhood also contains two other places associated with the wartime experiences of Jews. They are the Otto Weidt Workshop for the Blind Museum and the Anne Frank Centre.

The Gedenkstätte Stille Heldenis a place dedicated to preserving the memory of help extended to Jews in Germany. The word heroes, included in this institution’s name, embraces both those who helped Jews in hiding and the Jews themselves. Visitors also have access to the institution’s database which contains the names of a few thousand rescuers and rescuees.

The Museum Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt is dedicated to Otto Weidt, an industrialist, who, during World War II, employed around thirty blind and deaf Jews, Conscious of their origins, in this way, he saved them from deportation. He arranged false papers for some of them and hid a few within the workshop premises in a specially organised secret room. This museum is located in the original location of the workshop itself. Apart from the displays, visitors can view the place where several employees hid over long periods of time..

The Anne Frank Centre is located on Rosenthaler Straβe. One of its aims is to fight anti-Semitism and discrimination against other people. Its beginnings can be traced back to an exhibition in Berlin entitled The World of Anne Frank 1929-1945 in Berlin, which also went on display in several other places on the fiftieth anniversary of the fall of Nazism.

TheGerman Resistance Memorial Centre is an institution of remembrance, education, documentation and research. Its main goal is to show how individuals and groups fought against Nazism between 1933 and 1945. Conference participants visited the Resistance Against National Socialism exhibition which told of the social and ideological opponents to Hitler.

This project was made possible with the financial support of the European Commission. It reflects only the position of its author and the European Commission bears nio respensibility for its factual contents.