Project "Secondary Witnesses"

Fifth and sixth graders become second witnesses (09.05. & 10.05.2023)

Pupils at the Catholic secondary school are studying the life story of Holocaust survivor Rolf Abrahamsohn.

The ZWEITZEUGEN eV association held workshops and told the survival story of contemporary witness Rolf Abrahamsohn from Marl. The association aims to make a stand against forgetting and therefore tells children and young people the life stories of Jews who were persecuted during the Nazi era and who are now old or deceased.

Students become secondary witnesses

Discrimination, racism and anti-Semitism were on the curriculum for fifth and sixth grade students last week.

Through the stories in the project, the students themselves become second witnesses who are encouraged to actively campaign against racism.

At the beginning, Romina Leiding from the education project asked the participants: "What is important to you in life?" The answers came quickly: from playing football, family and friends to cell phones, pets and food. Then cards were handed out that illustrated the laws that restricted or prohibited the lives of Jews during the Nazi era: attending state schools, eating chocolate, keeping pets, being a member of a sports club, buying certain foods such as milk or wheat or using public transport were all prohibited by law. The participants learned about the historical background of the topic.

Rolf Abrahamson - a survivor of seven concentration camps during the Nazi era

Romina Leiding tells the story vividly, with the help of family photos, the passport and interview excerpts from Rolf Abrahamsohn, the only survivor of the family to survive seven concentration camps. His parents owned a textile shop in Marl, which was destroyed during Kristallnacht in 1938.

Deported to Auschwitz and returned to his hometown of Marl to wait for his father and brother, who unfortunately never returned, he opened a jeans shop. In memory of his parents, Rolf Abrahamsohn planted a forest of more than 5,000 trees and was co-founder of the Jewish Museum in Dorsten.