Helping young people from different countries with maintenance work in the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp memorials has a long tradition. Volunteer organization summer camps are starting again.
Nordhausen/Weimar (dpa/th) - After a one-year break, volunteers for restoration and care work are expected again this summer at the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp memorials. A total of three summer camps are planned in cooperation with the voluntary organizations Service Civil International (SCI) and Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ASF). The first participants are expected on Saturday in the former Nazi concentration camp Mittelbau-Dora near Nordhausen. Four women and five men from Germany, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Mexico and Kosovo have registered. The 13 participants in the ARSP summer camp are scheduled to arrive at the Buchenwald Memorial on Sunday. They come from Germany.
In Mittelbau-Dora, foundation remains and the outlines of former barracks are to be made visible during the two-week camp. The concentration camp, set up in 1943, was notorious for the forced labor in tunnels where the prisoners had to manufacture rockets and other armaments under the most inhumane conditions. Every third of the approximately 60,000 prisoners did not survive.
At the Buchenwald Memorial, the focus is on work on the Buchenwald Railway memorial trail, in the restoration workshop and on memorial stones for children and young people who were deported from the concentration camp. The two-week ARSP camp from Sunday will be followed by one of the SCI, to which participants from Azerbaijan, Mexico, Spain and Germany are expected. Most recently, the destruction of memorial trees for the victims of the concentration camp had also caused international outrage and horror. Near the memorial, seven trees dedicated to the children killed in Buchenwald and six named prisoners had been cut down.
