Contents page 1 — A concerned citizen page 2 — A big pile of shit page 3 — He knows the monsters page 4 — “Why are there no names?” On a page
read At the beginning of this story is the end of an encounter. We turn on the clock, watching how the sun moves in an elongated curve on the Brandenburg town of Bad Belzig, until she goes behind Wolf Thieme. Now, in the twilight, the sentence that reveals the core of his Motivation. Thieme, 81 years old, born between Hitler’s seizure of power and the beginning of the war, says: “If it should really come back to a coup from the right, we will probably have to, ultimately, shoot.” He is on the memorial stone of the forced labour camp Green. From the forest floor to the smell of withered pine tree on rising needles, and if you didn’t know better, one might think, his voice and I trembled.
Wolf Thieme does not want to have to shoot. He knows how loud a shot, the Echo’s in his head, after all this time.
He has never, by itself, a gun fired. In the war he was too young, after that, he served as a Journalist in West Germany, the strongest weapon in the Arsenal of democracy: of the word. He’s travelled a lot, lived in Berlin and Karlsruhe, Hamburg and Rome. 15 years ago he drew weary of the big cities to the small Bad Belzig, built a house and sat down to rest. But he didn’t become silent, on the contrary. He is a Board member of the Belziger Forum, a civil Association that was founded in the nineties, when neo-Nazis wanted to make the city to a national liberated Zone. He is entered in the SPD, has been a stumbling block in the centre of the village and complains about the dog training place on a former concentration camp grounds.
© Zeit ONLINE
most Recently, he was busy, an exhibition on Jewish life in the Region. For months, he has dug through the archives to find the transport lists, death notices, and newspaper articles. He has asked descendants and neighbors of memories and photographs. He wanted to understand, what are the intersections of the small town of Bad have Belzig and the unimaginable crimes of the Holocaust. Together with assistants, he researched the biographies of some of the Belziger Jews. As different as these life lines – they all have one thing in common: at some point, you shift all of a sudden, in the USA or China. Or you will simply break.
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1/12 Wolf Thieme unrolled 86 pages of a deportation list, Berlin-Auschwitz © Meiko Herrmann for TIME ONLINE 2/12 at St. Mary’s Church, the exhibition about Jewish life in the bathroom, it was shown Belzig. © Meiko Herrmann for TIME ONLINE 3/12 divine service in St. Mary’s Church on Sunday morning © Meiko Herrmann for TIME ONLINE © Meiko Herrmann for ONLINE 7/12 paid 4/12 One of the many: an entry in the guestbook of the exhibition © Meiko Herrmann for TIME ONLINE 5/12 Wolf Thieme in the city centre © Meiko Herrmann for TIME ONLINE 6/12 Contemplative: A cobblestone alley in Bad Belzig, The stumbling block in the city centre, Wolf Thieme. © Meiko Herrmann for TIME ONLINE 8/12, The W-Lan function is always: Refugees in front of the Café red angle © Meiko Herrmann for TIME ONLINE 9/12 Inserted Window in the Café red angle © Meiko Herrmann for TIME ONLINE 10/12 guide to the memorial Green, The dead Dunning branch of the ravensbrück concentration camp © Meiko Herrmann for TIME ONLINE 11/12 In fracture: dog exercise area on the grounds of Green © Meiko Herrmann for TIME ONLINE 12/12: Wolf Thieme is on the memorial stone of the forced labour camp Green © Meiko Herrmann for TIME, ONLINE
Meanwhile, the 18 blue look are panels for four weeks in the South aisle to the baptismal font. One of them is the history of the family Sachs, which owned a Department store in Belzig told. In the pogrom night at 9. November 1938, smash Belziger Nazis in the shop window. Neighbors can prevent that they burn the house. Only a few days later, the widow Ida Sachs sold the house to an “Aryan”. Her son Rudi has been sitting there in a prison camp. Meanwhile, steal Cabinet Belziger citizens, his motorcycle, his Gramophone and Radio. No one expects that that the owner will return from the concentration camp. After his release, Rudi flees with the ship to Shanghai, his mother followed him later by train. Uncle Bruno has not so much luck, in 1943, he was deported, he dies in Auschwitz.
He could not understand that you all wanted to kill the Jews, really, says Thieme. Cards that would have been bad enough, murder. At this fact, his mind fails. What is humanity worth it, if the person is able to ply you with malicious intent in your opposite? “It must have been Good. I hear this sentence again and again.” Last Belzigs mayor. He asked, Thieme, after a sincere Belziger he could mention in his part of the opening speech. Thieme reported to him by a Mr Bäricke, provided Ida Sachs with food, as your son was already in Shanghai. He told the mayor but also: “I did not come across during my research a lot of Good.” Now, as he repeated this sentence, he sounds like the balance of a 81-year-old journalists.
