Call for information about former inmates
It has only been in the last two decades that the memorial has gained significant attention, now drawing around 100,000 visitors annually.
Sarah Grandke is currently a visiting research fellow at the Sydney Jewish Museum while undertaking a PhD on Eastern Central Europe and the Bavarian periphery.
She will be in Sydney until at least April and is keen to connect with individuals knowledgeable about former inmates of Flossenbürg concentration camp in Germany, or Jewish and non-Jewish displaced persons involved in early memorial projects across Germany or Austria.
In 1938, the SS established the camp to exploit prisoner labour in local quarries. It expanded into over 80 subcamps, and more than 100,000 men and women were incarcerated, including over 22,700 Jews. At least 30,000 prisoners did not survive, the majority hailing from Eastern Central Europe.
Proficient in Polish and Ukrainian, Grandke explored literature and delved into the lives of over 2000 individuals connected to the Flossenbürg memorial committee. “An intriguing pattern emerged: a significant number of these non-Jewish and Jewish displaced persons (DPs) had emigrated to Australia in the late 1940s,” she said.
Grandke was a research associate for two years at the Valley of Death Memorial in Flossenbürg: a reminder of the atrocities committed during World War II. “I have often found myself standing in the Valley of Death. Personally, Flossenbürg has been much more than a workplace; it has been a nexus for connections with survivors, descendants, colleagues and visitors.”
It has only been in the last two decades that the memorial has gained significant attention, now drawing around 100,000 visitors annually.
Grandke aims to bring an Eastern European perspective to the memorial, one of the first concentration camp memorial sites in German-speaking countries, erected in 1946-47. “There was one research project done on the aftermath of Flossenbürg, but it is based on German and English sources only.”
As a guide at the memorial, she was asked many questions about the Valley of Death and its intriguing design. For example, why was the first site adorned with a strikingly Christian design, when Jews were also incarcerated there? Why were Polish inscriptions used alongside German and English? Why did the memorial incorporate national symbols from Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – states that were part of the Soviet Union and have only existed as independent countries since 1991?
These questions, her determination to discover answers and her work on European Studies piqued her desire to solve some of the mysteries of the Valley of Death Memorial. She believes it is very important for DPs to be recognised as their independent nationality, and not under the umbrella of the Polish or the Soviets.
Although she is German, Grandke has always been interested in Eastern Central Europe. She has worked for the past 10 years in disabled concentration camps and mobile sites to get more of this Eastern European perspective into the general narrative.
“That is definitely my aim, to bring more into the German consciousness, that they are Eastern Europeans of course. Collectively this has led me to my current research on early memory activists,” Grandke said.
“Who were the people responsible for the early memorial, and how did their experiences before, during and after the war shape the memorial from 1946 and beyond? Where did life take them after Flossenbürg?”
Contact Sarah Grandke at sgrandke@sjm.com.au
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