In April students of the Real School in the German city Munster as part of the project “We Write Your Names” found data on 30 natives of the Tambov Region, prisoners of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Commemorative plaques with their names will be installed in the fall.
Since 2010, School No. 7 in the city of Michurinsk, Tambov Region, and the Munster Real School have been participating together in the international project “We Write Your Names” which is supported by the German People’s Union for the Care of War Graves and the Documentary Centre of the Bergen-Belsen Memorial.
Using archival data Russian and German schoolchildren collect information about natives of the Tambov Region died during the Great Patriotic War in the concentration camps “Bergen-Belsen” and “Witzendorf” and make tablets with their names which are subsequently installed in a solemn atmosphere at the cemeteries of Soviet prisoners of war Hürsten and Witzendorf.
About 50,000 Soviet prisoners of war are buried in mass graves at the Khersten cemetery. Nowadays schoolchildren using archive materials have identified names of more than 500 Tambov residents died in the Bergen-Belsen and Witzendorf concentration camps and are still missing, and have found relatives of almost 150 victims.
The project “We Write Your Names” is being implemented as a part of the Russian-German Youth and School Exchange Program.
