Templin students: Reshaping a culture of remembrance for Jewish life!

Templin students: Reshaping a culture of remembrance for Jewish life!

Memory is a precious thing, especially when it comes to not letting history be forgotten. In Templin, this culture of remembrance has a long tradition that goes back to 1320, when Jewish life shaped the city. But there were also shadows over this history - anti-Semitic discrimination and pogroms are just as much a part of the legacy as the heyday of Jewish life. Holger Losch, a committed religion teacher at the Templin High School, accompanies his students in researching and appreciating not only the dark chapters, but also the bright spots of the Jewish past.

Since 1997, students have been working intensively to document and communicate Jewish life in their hometown. Under Losch's guidance, numerous projects were created that aimed to make memorials and memorials visible. A striking example is the Star of David at the Berliner Tor, which has been reminiscent of the former synagogue on Berliner Straße since its inauguration in 1999. These initiatives are part of a comprehensive approach to take seriously the confrontation with humiliation and persecution in history and to counteract current anti-Semitism, as volkshochschule.de reports.

Students create places of remembrance

An outstanding project was research into the history of the Jewish Cemetery on Poetensteig, which began in 2007 after heavy rain damaged the retaining wall. In intensive cooperation with the Central Council of Jews in Germany, a new memorial stone was erected in 2008. But that wasn't enough: by 2011, the students redesigned the area, which was finally consecrated as "Beth Olam", when Jewish prayer songs could be heard again for the first time in 90 years.

In the years that followed, there were around 50 students in grades eight to eleven who actively participated in various remembrance culture projects and tried to provide documentation and information. The city of Templin supported these projects and specifically sought collaboration with the school in order to jointly design an interactive place of remembrance - a concept that emerged during religious education classes and was ceremoniously inaugurated in 2019 with a moving handover.

Commitment against prejudice

The younger generations in Templin are more than just passive listeners to their own history; they actively influence it. Another exciting initiative took place in 2021 with a theater project as part of the theme year “1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany”. Students developed their own scenes to draw attention to anti-Semitism. 19 participants carried out the performance on the market square - an impressive moment in which not only international understanding was in the foreground, but also the commitment against prejudices was vividly implemented.

There are many ways to sharpen memory and historical awareness, as today's debate about remembering shows. According to the Federal Agency for Civic Education, society must increasingly ask itself how we deal with our past and what perspectives we adopt. Therefore, the role of young people in coming to terms with their own heritage is of utmost importance. Topics such as the culture of remembrance and the associated challenges - also with regard to post-migrant aspects - show that we all have a responsibility to hand over the past to collective memory in order to shape the future constructively, as bpb.de also notes.

Jannis Brüllke and Aaron Marschallek, two students from Templin, have already made plans in Storkow to commemorate Erna Brezinski, whose moving story will be part of this valuable culture of remembrance. Such initiatives are a sign that dealing with the past is not only necessary, but must also be integrated into our social consciousness in the long term. It remains exciting to see how the cultural landscape will develop with these monuments, memorial signs and the commitment of young people to understand historical contexts and current challenges together.