Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten Gedenkstätte Todesmarsch im Belower Wald

Educational programmes

The historic site in the forest, the open-air exhibition and the project workshop make a wide range of educational work possible. The Memorial offers guided tours lasting from one hour to several hours and projects lasting from a few hours to a few days. The programmes are aimed at schoolchildren from age 10 upwards and at groups of adults.

 

Guided tours

On a guided tour, participants are introduced to the open-air exhibition and the historic site in the forest. They are informed thoroughly about the final phase of the concentration camps and the death marches and have the opportunity to ask questions, which may then engender a group discussion.

We recommend that you allow at least 1½ hours for a guided tour. If groups have more time, objects found in Below Forest and films can be shown as well.

We will be happy to help you in preparing for and following up your visit and tour and to provide materials. We can also advise you about how to travel to the Memorial and on possible sponsorship funding.

As the tour takes place outdoors in all weathers, it is important to make sure that you wear suitable clothing and footwear, and in Summer to protect yourself adequately with sunscreen and insect repellent.

Projects

Projects lasting half a day, a full day or several days are tailored to the needs of each group. This means that details need to be discussed and prepared beforehand. Projects are as a rule product-oriented. What is produced may be a brochure, a film or a small exhibition. What is important is that participants themselves actively determine where the project is going. Various materials, such as eye-witness reports, drawings, found objects etc., are available in the project workshop, and there are also cameras, laptops, display walls, etc. that groups may use.

As an example, a half-day project could involve working with found objects and quotations from surviving inmates. As part of longer projects groups may also be able to spend the night in the Memorial.

The Memorial also arranges interviews and discussions with eye-witnesses, which are normally prepared by the school students involved in the course of a project day in Below Forest.

We will be happy to help you in preparing for and following up your visit and tour and to provide materials. We can also advise you about how to travel to the Memorial and on possible sponsorship funding. Ideally, we will be involved in developing your projects jointly with you.

As the project work sometimes involves being out of doors in all weathers, it is important to make sure that you wear suitable clothing and footwear, and in Summer to protect yourself adequately with sunscreen and insect repellent.

 

Here is a list of examples of projects:

  • Participants work up an exhibition featuring found objects, photos, drawings and texts and presenting biographies of inmates from various different countries. The exhibition can be displayed temporarily in the flexible display-case wall in the foyer of the project workshop or in your school.
  • Young people could work out a cycling tour along the Death March routes for interested tourists and lay out materials about their tour in tourist information centres in the region.
  • The open-air exhibition features, as an inter-active element, a map showing Death March memorial sites, which can be added to in the course of the project work. The group members look for graves and commemorative plaques in the place where they live or go to school. This information is then entered on the map on the glass board.
  • Participants create audio files with excerpts from memoirs of former concentration camp inmates, which can then be lent out to visitors to the Memorial.
  • Participants design individual monuments commemorating the Death March and its victims. These monuments can then be displayed temporarily on the grass in front of the project workshop.
  • After working on reports and drawings by former inmates, participants create their own drawings, which may then be displayed in their school together with additional information.
  • One demanding but interesting project involves creating, producing and performing a role-play which, using investigation files from the post-1945 period, looks at what people living along the Death March routes were able to do and the different ways they behaved.