A Day To Remember. East Germanys Day of Remembrance For The Victims of FascismGerman

German History Vol. 26, No. 2, pp.
195218
A Day to Remember: East Germanys Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Fascism
Peter Monteath
As memorial days go, East Germanys Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Fascism (Gedenktag fr die Opfer des Faschismus) was one of the more rapidly forgotten. While it took on ever more ritualized forms over the years, ever fewer participants and observers could recall just why it was that commemorative activities were held on and around the second Sunday of every September.1 Some thought that it harked back to the outbreak of war in September of 1939, but they erred.2 Others came to view it as just one of a number of rigidly timetabled occasions on the East German calendar designed to enable the ruling SED to perform solemn and vacuous acts of self-promotion. That might have been closer to the truth, and yet in reality this Day of Remembrance stemmed from a quite spontaneous and widely supported desire to recall the horrors of the Second World War within just a short time of the end of hostilities. The history of the day, from its origins in the aftermath of war through to the foundation of the GDR in 1949, tells us a good deal about Germany in this interregnum, when the division of Germany into two separate states did not always appear to be an inevitability. In this regard, tracing the history of a day of remembrance offers advantages over other forms of commemoration. Where monuments and memorials as tangible sites of remembrance might set the past in stone, in both a literal and a metaphorical sense, days of remembrance carry an inherent flexibility. The central concerns of one years activities might have faded or disappeared altogether, while new ones are identified or are hauled from the repository of shared memories. Not only the content of remembrance but its form too might undergo a process of evolution that grants insights into the changing circumstances in which the past is remembered, or perhaps forgotten. For these reasons the Day of Remembrance, in the post-communist age almost totally committed to irrelevance as a lieu de memoire,3 can nonetheless reveal much about the processes which
1 Peter
Downloaded from http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/ at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso on April 23, 2013
Joachim Lapp in his Traditionspflege in der DDR (Berlin, 1988), discusses remembrance days in the GDR in some detail, including the three main national holidays: 7 Oct., the GDRs national day, celebrating its founding on that date in 1949; 1 May, labelled International Kampftag und Feiertag der Werkttigen, with its tradition reaching back before the founding of the GDR; and 8 May, the Day of Liberation. There were numerous other commemorative days, as Lapp points out, but he neglects even to mention the Gedenktag fr die Opfer des Faschismus. A recent, notable exception is a booklet entitled Der zweite Sonntag im September: Gedenken und Erinnern an die Opfer des Faschismus. Zur Geschichte des OdF-Tages, by Hans Coppi and Nicole Warmbold (Berlin, 2006). Both the booklet and a related exhibition were produced by the Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes Bund der Antifaschistinnen und Antifaschisten in der BRD, the successor to the VVN mentioned below. 2 World Peace Day (Weltfriedenstag) was commemorated on 1 Sept., though this was not a work-free holiday and was not related to the second Sunday of that month. 3 Pierre Nora by no means intended that his term lieux de mmoire be applied solely to geographical or tangible sites of memory. Rather, he extends it to other media as well, such as painting and literature, and encompassing also days of remembrance. The common purpose uniting them is, as he puts it, to stop time, to block the work of forgetting, to establish a state of things, to immortalize death, to materialize the immaterial, Pierre Nora, Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mmoire, Representations, 26 (Spring 1989), p. 19.
The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the German History Society. All rights reserved. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghn003
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shaped the emergence of two Germanies from the destruction of war, and of the relationships with the past which shaped the identities of those two new states. Conventionally the processes at work might be labelled the politicization of memory, as commemorative activities in all the zones of occupation fell under the burgeoning and oppressive influence of the Cold War. Conventional, too, is the view that in the case of the Soviet Zone of Occupation and then the GDR, where the Gedenktag fr die Opfer des Faschismus became a central, officially sanctioned lieu de memoire, this process of politicization was essentially a process of the imposition of communist authority. The source was Stalin in Moscow; the agents were the Soviet Military Administration in Germany and the Moscow-trained Communists who, puppet-like, performed the will of their Soviet masters. In reality the history of the Day of Remembrance was a more complicated one than such conventions might insist, even if the impact of the Iron Curtains descent in both East and West is undeniable. Although the Day of Remembrance was primarily an affair of the Soviet Zone of Occupation and the GDR, its origins were distinctly German, and its political contours were shaped not just by the Soviets but by the Western allies as well, since all the occupying powers had a vested interest in the question of what kind of Germany might emerge from the ashes of the Third Reich, what kind of democracy might be installed there, and what kind of identity it might construct for itself. The policies and practices of the United States as an occupying power are usefully illustrative in this regard, as will be seen below, since the Americans had little truck with the brand of antifascism being promoted in their zone. In this sense, the Day of Remembrance lends weight to Jrgen Kockas notion that the history of the two German states must be understood in their interconnectedness. It is as much about Beziehungsgeschichte,4 about a history of connections in which historical developments emerge out of a complex interplay of actions and reactions, as it is about a simple imposition of authority from outside. In another sense also, the history of the Day of Remembrance offers an example of an interplay of forces or relations which resists a more conventional reading and insists on a more complex interpretation of the development of a postwar culture of remembrance. John Bodnar in his study of public memory and commemoration in the United States draws an apposite distinction between official and vernacular expressions of public memory. Official expressions stem from the concerns of cultural leaders or authorities at all levels of society, that is, people who have a common interest in social unity, the continuity of existing institutions, and loyalty to the status quo.5 That status quo was intimately linked with notions of national identity, it eschewed complexity and ambiguity, and it presented the past on an abstract basis of timelessness and sacredness.6 In contrast, a vernacular culture of remembrance encompassed an array of interests, it could embrace diversity and accommodate change over time. The notion of an
4 For
an explanation of the term and its relevance for postwar German history see Jrgen Kocka, Die Geschichte der DDR als Forschungsproblem: Einleitung, in Kocka (ed.), Historische DDR-Forschung. Aufstze und Studien (Berlin, 1993), p. 16. 5 John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 1992), p. 13. 6 Ibid., p. 14.
East Germanys Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Fascism 197
idealized national community is largely lacking, however, since the proponents of a vernacular culture are intent on protecting values and restating views of reality derived from firsthand experience in small-scale communities rather then the imagined communities of a large nation.7 Public memory, in Bodnars view, mediates the official and the vernacular. In the United StatesBodnars area of special interestthe symbolic language of patriotism became central to public memory because, as he puts it, it has the capacity to mediate both vernacular loyalties to local and familiar places and official loyalties to national and imagined structures.8 Germany in the immediate aftermath of war was different, not least because official notions of an imagined national community were so divergent and contradictory, and with the onset of the Cold War they drifted inexorably to the endorsement of a status quo which no-one had wanted. Nonetheless, an awareness of the coexistence and interrelatedness of official and vernacular can provide a framework for understanding not only the emergence of a memorial culture in the SBZ and GDR, but also an appreciation of what happens to public memory when official memory sets itself doggedly against the diversity and ambiguity of its vernacular counterpart, with the latters roots in the lived historical experiences of its proponents. This is not to suggest that in the public memory of the SBZ and the GDR official and vernacular memory were always at odds. Indeed, at first they were tightly intertwined, but the postwar period brought with it a rapid unravelling which was never reversed, at least not during the existence of the GDR. That descent into vacuous ritual was, however, vigorously contested from the beginning, was painful and disillusioning for many, and was not completed until after the foundation of the GDR. Indeed, at the end of the GDR and beyond, some residual traces of that initial postwar impulse to mourn and remember Nazisms millions of victims, regardless of their political colours or creed, could still be found.
Victims of Fascism The first of the Remembrance Days was held as early as September 1945, and the driving forces behind it were the so-called OdF committees, that is, the committees of the Victims of Fascism (Opfer des Faschismus). Their origins were in the various antifascist committees which had formed in the last weeks of the war, but were then reconstituted as OdF committees with the permission of the Allies. Their primary concern was to provide for the wellbeing of the countless victims of fascism who suffered extreme privation even after hostilities had ended. Many victims had just recently been liberated from concentration camps or other forms of imprisonment, their health severely compromised, and with little ability to care for themselves independently at a time when food and medical supplies were severely strained. The OdF committees were essentially selfhelp organizations for victims, and as such not merely organs of the KPD or the Soviet occupying powers. Indeed, initially the Soviets treated the original, spontaneously organized antifascist committees with some suspicion. However, reconstituted with official permission as OdF committees, and integrated into the structures of local government, they performed social functions which all the occupying powers found
7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. pp. 1415.
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useful. Their membership consisted overwhelmingly of individuals who bore not just physical but mental scars of Nazi oppression; their memories of the Third Reich drove their social and political activism in the postwar era. In Berlin, an important collecting point for many former victims of fascism, the Main Committee of the Victims of Fascism (Hauptausschuss Opfer des Faschismus) was formed within a few weeks of the wars end. The key figure on that committee was a certain Ottomar Geschke, a man who could indeed speak with some personal experience of the brutality of fascism. As a long-standing member of the KPD, Geschke had been arrested in the immediate wake of the Reichstag fire in February 1933 and had then spent the twelve years of the Third Reich in various places of detention, including the concentration camps Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald.9 Geschke was also a councillor on the newly formed council for Greater Berlin, the Magistrat. It was Geschke who, on 20 May 1945, the day after he had joined the Magistrat, appealed to the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) to allow the foundation of an OdF committee for the purpose of exercising a duty of care over victims. With official Soviet support assured, Geschke founded his committee on 14 June at a Berlin gathering of liberated prisoners.10 As Geschkes own role as initiator and then as chair of the committee suggests, the KPD was one of the driving forces, but in this instance it was neither the Moscowtrained elite gathered around Walter Ulbricht nor the Soviet comrades in Karlshorst who initiated policy towards Nazisms victims. Rather, the impetus came from within the ranks of those KPD members who had endured the Third Reich. Moreover, they were survivors who had remained in Germany and who indicated an early willingness to collaborate closely with a remarkable gamut of Nazisms former opponents. In many instances, this collaboration was an extension of forms of collaboration established both within and outside concentration camps during the period of the Third Reich. From a background of Communist resistance much like Geschkes came Margarete Jung, but then the Social Democrats too were represented in equal number through Otto Brass and Gustav Dahrendorf. Others came from bourgeois resistance circles, namely Hildegard Staehle, Andreas Hermes, Hermann Landwehr and Theodor Steltzer, while Heinrich Grber represented Christian resistance. Finally, Robert Havemann came from a resistance background of left-wing intellectuals, and Julius Meyer had been persecuted as a Jew. As Elke Reuter and Detlef Hansel point out in their study of the early organizations of former victims, The Berlin Main Committee symbolized in its make-up the will of those who had opposed the Nazis or been subjected to persecution to work together for a new beginning in postwar Germany.11 At the same time, one should be under no illusion about the desire from a very early point among the highest echelons of the KPD to harness these broadly antifascist forces for the KPDs own ends. What might have been conceived and driven at a grass-roots level in a manner which transcended political boundaries was from the beginning closely monitored and controlled by those leaders whoin Bodnars termsrepresented at an
9 Helmut Mller-Enbergs, Jan Wielgohs, Dieter Hoffmann (eds), Wer war Wer in der DDR. Ein biographisches Lexikon
(Bonn, 2000), p. Reuter and Detlef Hansel, Das kurze Leben der VVN von 1947 bis 1953. Die Geschichte der Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes in der sowjeetischen Besatzungszone und in der DDR (Berlin, 1997), p. 78. 11 Ibid., p. 79.
10 Elke
official level a commitment to the preservation of a status quo. Just days after the wars end Ulbricht had written to Georgi Dimitroff in support of the spontaneously forming committees devoted to the victims of fascism, in order, as he put it, to pull closer to us the antifascists, social democrats, trade-unionists, Zentrum leaders, people of 20 July.12 The role of Geschkes committee and that of many others like it, attached as they typically were to municipal councils around all of Germanys occupation zones, was to provide for the well-being of those who had suffered at the hands of the Nazis. In the first instance that meant above all the provision of basic food, clothing and shelter to the formerly persecuted during a period of often acute shortages in all these areas. To take once more the influential example of Berlin, the Main Committee of the OdF, whose members were honorary and debated issues of policy, was replicated through a committee of the same title within the Magistrat, where it operated as a department within the Main Office for Social Matters (Hauptamt fr Sozialwesen). Its main function was to provide appropriate care for recognized victims of fascism. Here too there is no question that the Communist influence was strong, above all in the person of its head Karl Raddatz, a longstanding member of the KPD, who himself had spent four years in Sachsenhausen as a political prisoner of the Nazis.13 The profile of Raddatz was by no means atypical of those who worked in the OdF committees or benefited from their work. The majority in the early weeks tended to be former political prisoners, among whom KPD members were well represented. Indeed, within this group there was a widely-held view that they should be regarded not merely as victims of fascism but as fighters against fascism. For them this was not merely a matter of linguistic niceties but rather placed them, as active opponents of Nazism, in a different moral realm from those who had merely suffered. In their reasoning, this distinction should have material consequences, that is, they should be entitled to higher levels of social support in recognition of their role in defeating Nazism. This view was put stridently in the Deutsche Volkszeitung in July 1945:
There are millions of people who are victims of fascism, who have lost their home, their apartment, their belongings. Victims of fascism are the men who had to become soldiers and were deployed in Hitlers battalions, those who had to give their lives for Hitlers criminal war. Victims of fascism are the Jews who were persecuted and murdered as victims of racial mania, the Jehovahs Witnesses and the work-shy (Arbeitsvertragssnder). But we cannot stretch the term Victims of Fascism to include them. They have all endured much and suffered greatly, but they did not fight.14
Had it been adopted, this argument for limiting OdF status to the politically persecuted, and by extension excluding such groups as Jews, Jehovahs Witnesses, homosexuals and those whom the Nazis had labelled asocial or work-shy would have drastically narrowed the group claiming OdF entitlements and placed the fighters in a position of a kind of elite. The exclusion of the Jews alone, numerically by far the most significant group, would have severely limited the ranks of the OdF. It was an issue which was hotly debated in Berlin and other parts of the Soviet Zone of Occupation (SBZ) through the
12 Ulbricht to Dimitroff, 17 May 1945, in Keiderling, Gruppe Ulbricht, p. 353; cited in Christoph Hlscher, NS-Verfolgte
im antifaschistichen Staat. Vereinnahmung und Ausgrenzung in der ostdeutschen Wiedergutmachung 1945 1989 (Berlin, 2002), p. 43. 13 Reuter and Hansel, Das kurze Leben der VVN, pp. 79, 578. 14 Deutsche Volkszeitung (1 July 1945). Cited ibid., pp. 8081.
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middle months of 1945, culminating in discussions at a major OdF gathering held in Leipzig on 27 and 28 October.15 By that time the Berlin delegates, who played a leading role, had themselves come around to the view that an inclusive definition of OdF must be adopted, which indeed it was. A tangible sign of that broad-church approach was that within Berlins Main Committee a section for Victims of the Nuremberg Laws was established under the leadership of Julius Meyer, joined by Heinz Galinski as his deputy. While the change of heart might at one level be interpreted as an act of moral and even fiscal generosity, the motivation was more likely to have been mundanely political and strategic. If the OdF were to speak with a united and influential voice in a new and unified Germanyas one still hoped would be the casethen the bigger the voice the better. And if the western allies were to be prepared to listen to that voice, then the fact of racial persecution had to be acknowledged: For the Western allies the victims of fascism were above all the Jews.16 Nonetheless, the outcome of the debates on just who qualified as OdF was not as resoundingly generous as might have first appeared. In practice, although those who did not fight were acknowledged and were issued OdF identity cards accordingly, those who could prove that they were resistance fighters received cards which marked them as such. It was more than just a moral victory for them, since their cards entitled them to higher levels of material support. Official figures for May 1946 showed that by that time there were 15,536 Fighters against Fascism registered in Berlin and the SBZ compared with 42,287 Victims of Fascism.17 If conditions of privation, and the need to ensure the survival and wellbeing of all those who in many cases had barely managed to outlive Hitler, set the main agenda item for the OdF committees everywhere, that did not forbid the exercise of other functions. Many former victims claimed that as the representatives of the other Germany, the Germany which had rejected Hitler, they provided the conscience of the new Germany being built on the ashes of the old. It was a kind of moral-political role they envisaged, to be exercised not through just one party but in as broad and public a way as could be achieved. One way, as Ottomar Geschke had foreseen, was through public commemorative events at which not only would the dead be mourned but the living would be prompted to apply the lessons of the past to Germanys present and future.
The First Day of Remembrance That first Day of Remembrance reflected outwardly at least the many groups of victims of the Third Reich. On 1 September 1945 the Berliner Zeitung reported that the Main Committee of the Victims of Fascism, one of whose roles was to preserve the memory of the dead, had nominated 9 September as the annual Day of Remembrance for all those who suffered and died in the concentration camps in the battle against the Nazi regime.18 The timing, it claimed, was related to events of the previous year: At the end of August
15 For
an overview of the debates over recognition as victims and the associated issue of restitution see especially Olaf Groehler, Integration und Ausgrenzung von NS-Opfern: Zur Anerkennungs und Entschdigungsdebatte in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone Deutschlands 1945 bis 1949, in Kocka, Historische DDR-Forschungen, pp. 10527. 16 Reuter and Hansel, Das kurze Leben der VVN, p. 83. 17 Source of figures is SAPMO-BArchiv, DY 30/IV 2/2027/29. 18 Berliner Zeitung (1 Sept. 1945), p. 2.
and in the first days of September of last year [i.e. 1944] a large number of renowned fighters against the Hitler system were murdered.19 In other words, the day was to provide the opportunity for those who attended it to mourn the dead. For many that would indeed have meant the dead antifascist heroes who had been executed during Hitlers extended fit of fury after 20 July 1944, but one might imagine that amid the ruins of postwar German the day might also have offered an occasion to mourn millions of other dead as well. It was a forum for a collective grieving of a kind unimaginable during the Third Reich. Circumstantial evidence suggests that other factors might also have influenced the choice of date. The war in the Far East was concluded formally on 2 September, bringing the global war to an end. In celebration the Allies staged a victory parade through the streets of Berlin, attended by Generals Eisenhower and Patton, Marshal Zhukov, and leading British and French officers. For all their relief that the killing had come to end, the open display of the Allies triumphalism must nevertheless have stuck in the craw of many Germans. In some quarters one response was to interpret the defeat of fascism as something of a German triumph as well. More precisely, it was the triumph of those who had resolutely resisted Hitler and his ilk, often at the cost of their freedom or even their lives. Their commitment to the cause was surely just as worthy of commemoration as the military triumph of foreign forces. Whether so intended or not, the first Day of Remembrance might be seen as both a counter and a complement to the Allies victory parade. In 1945 the site for the main rally on the Day of Remembrance was the Werner Seelenbinder Stadium, formerly known as the Neukllner Stadium and located in the Berlin district of that name, but already renamed in honour of the wrestler and resistance hero. Seelenbinder, whose communist sympathies were long and well known, had been executed by the Nazis in October 1944.20 At the stadium where he had fought, it was reported, a monument created by Professor Hans Scharoun would be erected bearing the words: To the Unknown Dead VictimsAs a Warning to the Living. Delegates would be invited to the event from all parts of Germany, and they were to bring with them lists of the dead, the missing, and the survivors from their districts. In the meantime in Berlin a large placard would appear, featuring a red triangle and the letters KZ, which would serve as a sign of honour for all those upright men and women who suffered in the concentration camps in the struggle against the Third Reich.21 The adoption of this symbol clearly connoted the central role being accorded the former political inmates of the concentration campsthe red triangle had been affixed to their shirts to identify them as politicals, as against the triangles of other colours designating other groups of prisoners, or the yellow stars of the Jews. Even the letters KZ represented a certain narrowing of focus, since not all the persecuted found their way into concentration camps.
19 Ibid. 20 The
Werner-Seelenbinder-Kampfbahn, as it was known in the period 19451949, was in Seelenbinders home district of Neuklln. Though he was executed in the Brandenburg penitentiary, his ashes and a memorial urn were deposited outside the stadium, which was also used in the early years of the GDR for party congresses. It still exists as a multi-purpose sporting complex bearing the name Werner-Seelenbinder-Sportpark. 21 Berliner Zeitung (1 Sept. 1945), p. 2.
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Thus the first signs of the politicization of the event were present as early as in 1945, and yet there was much in the rhetoric and the staging of that first Day of Remembrance which pointed to an inclusiveness transcending political or other differences. It was reported, for example, that Berlins Lord Mayor, Dr Arthur Werner, had formally proclaimed 9 September a Day of Remembrance for All Murdered Antifascists.22 It would begin with memorial services of both the major denominations. Then in the afternoon there would be a great gathering at the Seelenbinder Stadium, where the Main Committee of the OdF would perform a grand memorial service. The event would be, in the words of the Lord Mayor, a commemoration for Thlmann, Breitscheidt, Leuschner,23 the men of 20 July, for all the known and unknown murdered fighters against the Nazi system. On 9 September Berlin honours its murdered heroes, honours the millions of nameless and unknown dead victims of fascism in all countries.24 In order that the occasion should be accompanied by an appropriate level of gravitas and respect for all those whose memory was being honoured, Dr Werner announced that on the day itself public dancing was forbidden; furthermore he appealed to his fellow citizens of Berlin that they refrain from public diversions (ffentliche Lustbarkeiten).25 As Dr Werner had anticipated, the day began with a series of religious services. An evangelical service was held in Berlins Marienkirche, at which Heinrich Grber, himself persecuted by the Nazis for his support for the racially persecuted, addressed not only those present but a much larger audience on radio. Meanwhile a Catholic service was conducted at St. Klaras Church in Neuklln in memory of those persecuted for their religious beliefs under Nazism, while at St. Hedwigs Cathedral, and in the presence of thousands who filled the surrounding streets, Bishop Conrad Graf von Preysing led a pontifical requiem. Among those who had lost their lives he singled out the figure of St. Hedwigs own provost Lichtenberg, who had protested against the maltreatment of the Jews and prayed for them, an act which brought him imprisonment and then death.26 Just how many participants made their way to the stadium in Neuklln that afternoon is not clear.27 In any case, from assembly points in all the sectors of Berlin streams of participants made their way to the venue, where they arrived to the sounds of Chopins funeral march, viewed the iconic red triangle and listened to the official recitations and addresses. One of them was by Maria Wiedmaier, who spoke of the suffering of women at the hands of the Nazis. With remarkable frankness she claimed,
22 Berliner Zeitung (4 Sept. 1945), p. 3. 23 Former
KPD leader Ernst Thlmann leader had been executed in Buchenwald on 18 August 1944, though Rudolf Breitscheid, imprisoned in Buchenwald, died under different circumstances. According to official sources of the time, at least, he was the victim of an allied bombing raid on 24 Aug. 1944. The trade unionist Wilhelm Leuschner was implicated in the July 1944 plot to murder Hitler, was arrested and executed on 29 Sep. 1944. 24 Berliner Zeitung (4 Sept. 1945), p. 3. 25 Ibid. 26 Berlin ehrt die Opfer des Faschismus, Berliner Zeitung (9 Sept. 1945), p. 1. 27 The title alone of the chapter Der 9. September 1945: Die Kundgebung der Hunderttausend zu Ehren der Opfer des Faschismus in the collection Hauptausschuss Opfer des Faschismus (ed.), Zwei Jahre Hauptausschuss Opfer des Faschismus (Berlin, 1947), pp. 4247, suggests an attendance of 100,000, but the chapter suggests 50,000. The correspondent of the Berliner Zeitung (11 Sept. 1945) put it at 60,000, while the correspondent of the Times of London (10 Sept. 1945) put it as low as 20,000.
East Germanys Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Fascism 203 The knowledge of our collective guilt gives us the strength to rebuild and to make good. In the camp we antifascist women have seen how strong we are if we stand together. That is why we are convinced: we will make it this time.28
Wiedmaier was followed on the podium by Ottomar Geschke of the Main Committee of the OdF, who was similarly forthright: The smashing of Nazism is the work of the victorious armies of the Soviet Union, America and England. That was the day of liberation for us. For that we thank them, earnestly, quietly and in celebration. As for the Germans who had fought against Hitler, they provided the avant-garde for the creation of a new Germany: We honour our heroes if we fulfill their legacy, if we do our duty.29 The inaugural gathering to commemorate the victims of fascism closed with a selection of poetry and song, culminatingas was to remain the tradition over many years to comein the singing of Brder, zur Sonne, zur Freiheit (Brothers, to the sun and freedom). Of Russian origin and with revolutionary pedigree, this workers song had become popular in a German version in the Weimar Republic, and then was sung even more widely in left-wing circles after the Second World War.30 When Berlins Magistrat met on 10 September it reviewed the previous days events, which, with the exception of some undisciplined behaviour, were regarded as an overwhelming success. Geschke thanked the Lord Mayor for his address, Professor Scharoun for his monument, the representatives of the churches for their commemorations, and the media for playing their role. Dr. Werner responded with thanks to Geschke, the heart and soul of the entire rally.31 His words were endorsed by the Communist Magistrat member Karl Maron, who argued: It will be necessary to expand the actions in Berlin to the entire country and to exploit [auszunutzen] the activity of the former concentration camp inmates for other tasks in future.32 That those tasks would be explicitly political in nature was already clear in September 1945, since Communists like Maron were well aware that not everyone was so enthusiastic about the Day of Remembrance. An internal report prepared for the Communist members of the Magistrat pointed out that commemorative activities connected with the Day of Remembrance had been forbidden in the French zone of occupation. The OdF committee in the district of Wedding had nonetheless proceeded to organize for the occasion a wreath-laying at a cemetery, attended by some 400 participants and three French officers. The presence of the officers was taken as tacit approval, and yet two days after the Day of Remembrance the President of Weddings OdF committee was arrested by the French police, allegedly for not following the militarys orders. 33 Problems in Wedding notwithstanding, the willingness to repeat the experience of the first Day of Remembrance was strong among the OdF committees, and it appears to
28 Berlin ehrt die Opfer des Faschismus, Berliner Zeitung (11 Sept. 1945), p. 1. 29 Ibid. 30 http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C3%BCder%2C_zur_Sonne%2C_zur_Freiheit (accessed 7 April 2006). 31 die
Seele und der Kopf der ganzen Kundgebung. Jrgen Wetzel (ed.), Die Sitzungsprotokolle des Magistrats der Stadt Berlin 1945/46, Teil I. (Berlin, 1995), Protokoll der Sitzung vom 10.9.1945, p. 409. 32 Ibid. 33 Parteiinterner Bericht kommunistischer Magistratsmitglieder ber die Entwicklung und politische Lage in Berlin (2. Septemberhlfte 1945), SAPMO-BArch. ZPA, NL 99/1, Bl. 3447. Reproduced in Wetzel (ed.), Die Sitzungsprotokolle, p. 450.
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have been their resolve, channelled by Geschke, that prepared the path for future commemorations on the second Sunday of September each year. At a meeting of the OdF committees held in the month after that first Day of Remembrance, Geschke told those gathered before him:
When we held our great memorial rally in Berlin on 9 September there was not just the celebration at the Hermann [sic!he meant Werner] Seelenbinder Stadium, where thousands laid wreaths, but in countless buildings small altars or plaques or emblems of one kind or another were set up where Victims of Fascism had been recorded. We need to preserve and cultivate this thought and make sure that we make these days in early September, around the 9 September, into the traditional Remembrance Day for our dead. You here in Saxony staged commemorations twice in some places, but if the entire German people on one day makes a pilgrimage to its heroes then that will have a huge impact, and that is why we are preparing now for the first days of September in 1946.34
Predictably, perhaps, the report published in The Times of London was less enthusiastic. Having just witnessed the first rally in Neuklln the correspondent pondered: It was remarkable that, although the ceremony was essentially anti-Fascist, its trappings were those of any Nazi rally, minus the Swastika.35
Remembrance and Cold War 19461949 The development of the Day of Remembrance over the following years illustrates how the political circumstances in which it took place changed, most notably through the onset of Cold War, but also how the day itself adjusted to those circumstances. With the flexibility that a designated day of commemoration provides, the annual event accommodated the changing political climate. In doing so it changed, not only in its forms but also in its functions. The element of mourning so evident on the first Day of Remembrance receded, as did the open acknowledgement of collective guilt through complicity in the crimes of Nazism, so eloquently expressed by Maria Wiedmaier in 1945. Moreover, the tendency to limit the range of antifascists being rememberedalready evident in 1945was driven further over the following years, to the extent that not only were the passive victims marginalized, but even active resisters of unfashionable political persuasions similarly found themselves on the outside. In short, the diversity, the emotiveness, and the appeal to the actual historical experiences of those gathered, so evident at the first Day of Remembrance, gave way to commemorative activities which focused on an analysis of the political problems of the present, which eschewed diversity, and which rested on an ever more tenuous link with the experiences of those who attended them. Vernacular memory, in other words, was being subsumed by official memory, and not just in the Soviet zone of Berlin where support for the Day of Remembrance was at its firmest. In Berlins western sectors few were under any illusions about the roles Communists played on the OdF committees, in the work of the Main Office of the Victims of Fascism in the Berlin Magistrat, and in the organization of the first Day of Remembrance. There
34 Speech
by Ottomar Geschke, Oct. 1945. Wortprotokolle der Konferenz der Ausschuesse Opfer des Faschismus 27.10.1945, SAPMO-Archiv, DY 54/277/1/1. 35 Victims of Fascism, The Times (10 Sept. 1945), p. 4.
was, moreover, every expectation that they would continue to do so in the following years. In the aftermath of war the open invocation of an antifascist legacy could hardly be condemned, yet the Western sectorsas so tellingly illustrated by the French response in 1945were wary of this Communist influence and of any attempt to politicize the activities of the OdF committees. In 1946 Western powers received further evidence that a politicization of the OdF was taking place. On 3 March in that year the Main Committee staged a rally in Berlin in support of the amalgamation of KPD and SPD, and its secretary, Karl Raddatz, used an official letterhead of the Berlin Magistrat to announce the rally. For the American city commander Barker the use of the Magistrats letterhead for this blatantly political purpose was intolerable; he had the Soviet city commander arrest Raddatz and initiated an inquiry into the Main Committee and its functions. The result was that Raddatz was dismissed from his office of Secretary of the Main Committee.36 Clearly the American authorities were not prepared to accept any extension of the social activities of the OdF into the thorny realm of politics. Nonetheless the amalgamation of the KPD and the SPD to form the Sozialistische Einheitspartei (Socialist Unity Party, SED) did take place, as did the second Day of Remembrance. For reasons unclear it was not staged on the second Sunday, but on 22 September. The formation of the SED earlier in the year provided part of the backdrop for events, as too did the ongoing trials of major war criminals taking place in Nuremberg. As in the previous year, a range of events were organized at and around the main gathering in Berlin. In the four sectors of the city commemorative activities were staged, school students were addressed on the Saturday before the main event, a brochure was prepared by the main committee of the OdF with the title Das heimliche Deutschland (Secret Germany), and two plays, both with Jewish themes, were staged: Professor Mamlok at the Volksbhne and Nathan der Weise at the Deutsches Theater.37 In contrast to the previous year, this time the major gathering took place not in Neuklln in the American Sector but in the Lustgarten in the Soviet-controlled heart of East Berlinbordered by the Old Museum, the Cathedral and the still-standing remains of the Castlewhere it was to remain for decades. The stairs outside the Old Museum provided a stage for speakers, while the crowds gathered on the open space before the museum. Flags of all European nations decorated the museums faade, whilst a flame burned in a huge bowl.38 Proceedings commenced with the laying of a wreath. There followed the playing of Beethovens Eroica and the Egmont Overture, before, as in the previous year, the Lord Mayor Dr Werner delivered the opening speech.39 Geschke followed in addressing the tens of thousands gathered before him on issues relating to both the past and the present. He commended the 100,000 brave fighters who had lost their
36 See Hlscher, NS-Verfolgte, p. 43. 37 Letter from Hauptausschuss Opfer des Faschismus to Margarete Junj (16 Dec. 1946), SAPMO-BArch/DY 54/277/1/45,
Bestand Opfer des FaschismusAusschsse, Hauptausschuss und Landesausschsse, p. 154.

38 Gelbnis der Antifaschisten, Berliner Zeitung (24 Sept. 1946), p. 6. 39 Ibid.
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Figure 26.03: Poster for the 1946 Day of Remembrance. The red triangle had already established itself as the main symbol. The text above it reads, For you the laurels, for us the duty below it reads, Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Fascism, followed by the date on which the commemoration was held that year. It was the only occasion on which it was not held on the second Sunday in September. Source: DHM, Berlin. Used with permission.
lives in concentration camps and prisons as they battled the Nazi regime. He recalled also those from other countries who had served on the International Committees in the camps and who had sacrificed themselves in resisting Hitler. But in addition he spoke of Nuremberg and the trials taking place there, demanding
that justice be delivered.40 After Geschke, surviving members of various resistance groups spoke of their experiences, indicating that the inclusiveness of the previous years commemoration had been preserved. The proceedings closed once more with the singing of Brder, zur Sonne, zur Freiheit.41 By 1947 developments in domestic politics in the SBZ had further altered and politicized the environment of the commemorations in that year. In February 1947 the various OdF groups in the SBZ were gathered into a single organization representing their interests, the Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes (hereafter VVN, Association of the Nazi Regimes Persecuted). 42 The VVNs broad function was to unite antifascist elements and to provide a platform for the construction of a united and antifascist Germany. In pursuing its goals it sought hard to depict itself as a supra-political organization, representing the full gamut of victims. Karl Raddatz, who had reemerged after his brief detention to become the first General Secretary, affirmed, Our organization has to stand above party politics and religion (muss eine berparteiliche und berkonfessionelle sein), because otherwise it would lose all meaning.43 Among the Western allies there was a strong scepticism concerning such claims, not least because Raddatzs own affiliations were well known. For this reason, although the VVN was able to establish itself in all zones of occupation, it never achieved its goal of becoming a national organization. And it was only in the SBZ that it was permitted to exist as a zone-wide organization; elsewhere in the West it was permitted to exist only on a regional level.44 One of the specific tasks the VVN adopted from the beginning was to continue the practice of remembering the victims of fascism.45 At a conference of VVN delegates from all zones of occupation in Frankfurt am Main in March 1947, it was resolved that the victims of fascism should be commemorated on the same day in all parts of Germany.46 Indeed, in some quarters the day became known as the VVN-Remembrance Day, although the VVN continued to rely on the permission and collaboration of numerous organizations to ensure that the event did indeed take place. Crucial above all in Berlin, once more at the centre of events, but where political complexities and sensitivities delayed the formal founding of the Berlin VVN until early 1948, was the active support once more of the Magistrat of Greater Berlin and of the SED. In the SBZ the first president of the VVN was none other than Ottomar Geschke, an honour which would assure his continued prominent involvement in the Day of Remembrance but also strengthen fears about the Communist appropriation of the event. In allowing the event to be heldas members of the Allied Kommandatura exercising control over Greater Berlinthe Americans were nonetheless eager to ensure
40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 On the history of the VVN see especially Reuter and Hansel, Das kurze Leben der VVN, passim. 43 Archiv
IVVdN, Akte VVN 19461947, Delegiertentagung der VVN Gross-Berlin am 23.11.1946, Referat Raddatz. Cited in Reuter and Hansel, Das kurze Leben, p. 127. 44 For a (rather uncritical) history of the VVN in the West see Ulrich Schneider, Zukunftsentwurf Antifaschismus: 50 Jahre Wirken der VVN fr eine neue Welt des Friedens und der Freiheit (Bonn, 1997). From Feb. 1950 the VVN had a rival in the West in the form of the Bund der Verfolgten des Naziregimes (BVN). 45 Landesarchiv Berlin (LAB) Omgus 4/1271/2. 46 SAPMO im Bundesarchiv. DY 30/IV 2/2.1/77 Protokolle der Beschlsse des Politbro des ZK der SED, 194649. Anlage Nr. 1 zu Protokoll Nr. 87.
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that the Communists would not appropriate the Day of Remembrance for their own political ends. For this reason American authorities banned as part of the 1947 Day of Remembrance a procession through their zone into the Soviet zone, where the Lustgarten rally was to occur. Participants from the American sector consequently had to make their way individually across the intersector border, unfurling their flags and banners only after they had reached the eastern sector. Similarly, the Americans forbade the erection of unauthorized monuments47 and the use of other OdF symbols in public places. Their position was made clear in an order from the Office of Military Government US Berlin Sector in Kreuzberg, which stated:
The unauthorized erection of monuments in the US Sector by the Victims of Fascism and the proposal by the Victims of Fascism that flags or posters be put on dwellings and in public places commemorating the achievements of victims of the Nazi regime is forbidden. All red insignia will be removed at once from all monuments erected in the US Sector and no flags or posters will be permitted on said monuments nor will they be used in any other way in connection with the 14 September demonstrations by the Victims of Fascism.48
American actions did not go unnoticed in other parts of the city. An article in the Soviet-licensed Tgliche Rundschau of 17 September, three days after the Day of Remembrance, gave an eyewitness account of events on the Saturday morning in the American Sector before Sundays commemoration:
In fact, the importance of the day is nowhere to be seen externally. And yetin front of the Town Hall of Steglitz inhabitants had laid down flowers and wreaths at the commemorative tablets of one of those brave men who had enough courage at that time to say no. We are just arriving in time to see gentlemen in dark suits remove the wreaths and flowers. Policemen in civilian clothes. They said it was forbidden. The Sectorassistent of the American Sector had given the order. It is the German chief of police of that sector. The spectators are upset, can hardly understand how that is possible. For years they have been calling for our resistance against the Nazis by radio during the war and now they take down the flowers from the memorial stone and threaten to punish us. What is one still to believe? A common woman is saying these words, and she has misty eyes. In Zehlendorf we learn that banners, posters and leaflets against Fascism are not allowed to be pinned or distributed publicly. Is one afraid of the colour red?49
Some of the American thinking on what was becoming an increasingly vexed issue is revealed in a memorandum from the Office of Military Government Berlin Sector Civil Administration Branch dated 6 September, when attitudes to the approaching Day of Remembrance were being considered. On the one hand, it was noted, the celebration had been approved by the Allied Kommandatura. On the other, however, as the author noted, We all regard the V of F [ie Victims of Fascism, by now VVN] with suspicion
47 In
the district of Schneberg the OdF section in the Social Services Department (Abteilung Sozialwesen) proposed the erection of a monument to the Victims of Fascism in Schneberg on the Kaiser Wilhelm Platz. The plan was outlined in a letter to the Americans Information Services Control Section in Dahlem. It was to be in the form of an obelisk 7 metres tall and 3.5 metres wide, topped with a triangle and the letters KZ. There would be plates on each of the four sides of the base: one dedicated to active fighters, one to the six million European victims of the Nuremberg Laws, one to the 130,000 Berlin victims (including 11,000 children) of those Laws, and one to the 34 million overall war dead. The proposal was accompanied by a sketch of the design by Fritz Hucke. Letter, Bezirksamt Schneberg Gross-Berlin Abteilung Sozialwesen Opfer des Faschismus to Information Services Control Section (1 Sept. 1947). LAB OMGBS 4/1282/2 Akten der Amerikanischen Militrverwaltung in Berlin. It was rejected by Colonel Babcock. 48 Landesarchiv Berlin (LAB) REP 280 Nr. 6869. Order dated 9 Sept. 1947. 49 Fear of Red Flags? Tgliche Rundschau (16 Sept. 1947). Translation is based on that provided in Akten der Militrverwaltung in Berlin, LAB OMGBS 4/1282/2.
because it is being made a political football; in Berlin is heavily SED. In many respects they are phony. In some they represent a sound move toward rehabilitation.50 Those who did make their way to the East or who came from within the Soviet zone on the afternoon of Sunday 14 September witnessed a scene in the centre of East Berlin strongly reminiscent of that of the previous year. From one oclock in the afternoon long columns of participants made their way to the Lustgarten. At about four oclock the survivors of Nazi oppression arrived, among them the few surviving members of the Berlin Jewish community, Berlins fighters from the Spanish Civil War, delegations from factories and youth groups.51 They delivered some 400 wreaths to the steps of the old museum and around the flame, forming a colourful carpet of flowers. This time it was the deputy mayor, the Social Democrat Louise Schroeder, who addressed the crowd, recalling the sacrifices of those who had fought against fascism. She was followed by the ubiquitous Geschke, who proudly proclaimed, In all the cities and villages of Germany millions are thinking of those who lost their lives in the hell of fascism.52 Once again he did not eschew the opportunity to address topical political issues, and in 1947 that meant above all the hardening of divisions in Germany as the Cold War threatened to impede moves to re-establish a unified Germany. He pleaded: Let us be united not only in commemorating the dead but in all questions concerning the German people. We are one Volk, one nation, we have one homeland, our Germany. With an eye already turned to the forthcoming Allied talks in London he demanded of the worlds statesmen: Give Germany the peace it desires as an economic and political unity.53 His words addressed sensitive domestic issues as well; those who expressed antiSemitic views, he contended, were enemies of humankind.54 This year, once more, proceedings closed with the common singing of Brder, zur Freiheit, zur Sonne.55 By 1948 the stamp of Cold War divisions was even clearer, the most tangible manifestation being the blockade of the Western sectors of Berlin and the Allied airlift to service them. The Allied Kommandatura, which had had to approve the staging of the event in previous years, was now dormant, the Magistrat was divided and did not involve itself in the event. It did, however, organize a modest memorial service held on 12 September at the Pltzensee prison in the Western part of the city, a site where thousands of Nazisms opponentsmost prominently some of the participants in the 20 July 1944 plothad been executed. At the same time the Berlin VVN found its operations heavily compromised through the political climate but devoted itself to the maintenance of the annual commemoration in the East. With the permission of the Soviets it was indeed able to stage the main gathering once more in the Lustgarten. As it happened, activities in the East experienced a provocative prelude in the Western part of the city. At a rally held on 9 Septemberthree days before the main rally in the Eastern part of the citya West Berlin rally was held in front of the ruins of the
50 Memorandum
Office of Military Government Berlin Sector Civil Administration Branch (6 Sept. 1947). LAB OMGBS 4/1282/2. 51 Berlin gedachte der OdF, Berliner Zeitung (16 Sept. 1947), p. 6. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 Der antifaschistische Kampf geht weiter, Tribne (15 Sept. 1947), p. 2. 55 Ibid.
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Reichstag, immediately adjacent to the intersector border. The West Berlin Lord Mayor Ernst Reuter spoke his famous words, Peoples of the world look at this city and recognize that you must not and cannot abandon this city and this people.56 He went on to warn the 300,000 Berliners gathered before him against participating in the Day of Remembrance on the coming Sunday. Some saw this as a direct affront to victims of fascism; at the very least it indicated that the Day of Remembrance was dividing the city just as was the blockade.57 The East responded with a series of events on and around the Day of Remembrance on a larger scale than ever before. Just how extensive it had become is evident from the VVNs preparations. Over 3 days11, 12 and 13 Septemberthere were to take place: a congress of resistance fighters on the morning of the 11th; a welcoming rally at the State Opera on the evening of the 11th; a main rally in the Lustgarten on the 12th; meeting of the concentration camp groups on the 13th; cultural events for domestic and international delegates on the 12th and 13th; rallies and excursions in the Soviet Occupation zone.
In all this, it was stressed, it was crucial that the international representatives of FIAPP (Fdration Internationale des Anciens Prisonniers Politiques, International Association of Former Political Prisoners) spoke so as to underline the international character of the occasion.58 To the larger scale was added the sensitive political climate created by the fascist provocation led by Reuter in the West, which might well have increased attendances. For the main rally in the Lustgarten on Sunday 12 September (Fig. 26.04), Berlins Vorwrts newspaper put the number of participants at well over 300,000, trumpingif the numbers are correctthe Reichstag rally addressed by Reuter.59 Moreover, the newspaper was at pains to emphasize that many of those present had come from other parts of the world to be present. In giant letters across the top of the Old Museum hung the rallying cry for that year, Battle against FascismBattle for Peace. If speeches in previous years had drawn parallels between past and present, the appropriation of the past for the political circumstances of the by now fully fledged Cold War was now plain for all to see. As the main organizers of the event, the VVN had appealed to Germans not only to commemorate the victims of fascism but also to give the right response to the neofascist efforts in Berlin.60 None of the participants could have been surprised that one of the main speakers was once again Ottomar Geschke. He pointed to the ongoing struggle being waged in Greece and Spain, where American wealth, he claimed, was supporting the fascist cause. He also referred, inevitably, to the events of the previous Thursday in West Berlin. Geschke, however, refused to be intimidated by news from the other side of the city, because
56 Cited in Reuter and Hansel, Das kurze Leben der VVN, p. 200. 57 Ibid. 58 Protokoll
der Sitzung des Zentralvorstandes der VVN vom 9.1.1948, SAPMO-Barch. Unterlagen des ZK der SED/ Sekretariat Lehmann DY 30/IV 2/2.027/31, p. 236. 59 Die gewaltige Kundgebung im Lustgarten, Vorwrts (13 Sept. 1948), p. 3. 60 Ibid.
Figure 26.04: Scene from the 1948 Day of Remembrance rally in the Lustgarten. Note the ag of Israel below the ubiquitous red triangle. Source: G. Gronefeld/DHM, Berlin. Used with permission.
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gathered before him was the army of millions of Berlins workers. It is the honest worker, the true Berlin.61 If the Cold War rhetoric of the event was stronger than ever before, it is nonetheless true that some attention was turned to the victims of fascism, and not only to the politically persecuted. Notable in 1948 was the prominence given to the recollection of the persecution of the Jews in particular. Among the flags draped from the Old Museum was the flag of the newly proclaimed state of Israel, created that year, it should be remembered, with the support of the Soviet Union. One of the speakers at the event was the prominent Jew Heinz Galinski, at that time the Deputy President of the VVN, and charged with opening proceedings. If today we remember our dead comrades whom the Hitler regime murdered, he said, then it is with the pledge: as we have fought against fascism, so we will in future fight for peace and harmony among the peoples of the world.62 In the presence not only of Berliners but also of guests from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania, Norway, Denmark and other countries, the president of FIAPP, Maurice Lampe, also spoke, as did a Soviet delegate, Lieutenant-General Godejew. In the by now timehonoured tradition, the day came to an end with the singing of Brder zur Sonne, zur Freiheit. Officially the VVN proclaimed the occasion a huge success, putting attendance at half a million.63 In the West, the newspaper Der Abend used the headline Forced Rally of 70,000 (Zwangskundgebung der 70 000), while Der Kurier ran with Abuse of the Dead (Mibrauch der Toten).64 By the time of the fifth Day of Remembrance, scheduled for 11 September 1949, the division of Germany, an outcome which the OdF and the VVN had feared and resisted resolutely, had become a reality. The Federal Republic had been founded on 23 May of that year; the birth of the GDR was just weeks away. The descent of the Iron Curtain was complete, with inevitable consequences for the staging of activities in that year. American attitudes had hardened further so as to impose an outright ban on participation in the event organized in the East by the VVN. Once more a kind of countercommemoration was organized for Pltzensee in the West. The renewed choice of that site, with its close links with the Men of 20 July, confirmed the view that in the West any act of remembering antifascism would focus on its most conservative variations. On the day after the VVNs event was held as usual in East Berlins Lustgarten, the Police Inspector in Kreuzberg wrote to the American Liaison Officer Major Melchers:
The members of the VVN (East) held a great meeting at Berlins Lustgarten on 11 September 1949. The SED had called upon all subordinated organizations for participation. The communist organizations in the Western Sectors had planned a demonstration from the district collection points to the Lustgarten. Since the demonstrations were not considered a rally of those persecuted by the Nazi regime but a communist demonstration, all demonstrations in the Western Sectors of Berlin were forbidden by the Police President.65
61 Geschke appelliert an das Weltgewissen, Vorwrts (13 Sept. 1948), p. 3. 62 Die gewaltige Kundgebung im Lustgarten, p. 3. 63 Reuter and Hansel, Das kurze Leben der VVN, p. 267. 64 Der
Abend (13 Sept. 1948); Der Kurier (13 Sept. 1948). Cited in Reuter and Hansel, Das kurze Leben der VVN, p. 201. 65 Polizei-Inspektion Kreuzberg an den Verbindungsoffizier Major Melchers, 12 Sept. 1949, Landesarchiv Berlin (LAB) OMGBS4/1271/2. Text based on original American translation.
Not content with controlling events in their own sector, the police chose to send a reporter into the East to observe proceedings in the Lustgarten. Information received was that about 150,000 were present there, that the meeting had begun at about 11 in the morning and lasted just over an hour. Its nature was, in the reporters view, less a commemoration than a propaganda meeting.66 Another more subtle feature of the activities of 1949 went unobserved by that reporter. In the previous year considerable attention had been accorded to the remembrance and condemnation of Nazi antisemitism, attention which was revived a couple of months later with official recognition of the tenth anniversary of the November pogrom. By 1949, however, and under the influence of a renewed wave of antisemitism originating in Moscow, Jewish suffering had largely been removed from Day of Remembrance agendas.67
Divided Memory Convinced though they were that the annual Day of Remembrance in the East was little more than a propaganda meeting, it was nonetheless difficult for West Germans to condemn the event outright. To do so would have been interpreted in some quarters as a flagrant condemnation of antifascism, if not as a sign of resurgent fascism in the West. On the other hand, to adopt East German memorial practices would hinder the Federal Republic in developing its own distinctive identity. One early response to this dilemma came in 1950, when West Germanys Interior Minister Gustav Heinemann, realizing that the VVN was planning the annual Day of Remembrance on 10 September, suggested a pre-emptive strike. A multi-faceted Day of Remembrance might be held on the first Sunday of the month in such a way as to combine remembering the war dead with the celebration of the new constitution and a Day of German Unity. But Heinemann found no support in cabinet for his one-size-fitsall solution to the question of a national holiday.68 For a short time the VVNs annual Day of Remembrance thus continued to be observed in the West. The original timingthe second Sunday of every September was preserved, but the location and the content were tailored to Western needs. With modest precedents established in the previous two years, the central site of remembrance chosen was the Pltzensee prison. The cornerstone of the memorial was laid on 9 September 1951, while the memorial was officially inaugurated on 14 September 1952. Though the location had changed, even in the West the commitment to September for a time remained unchallenged. Eventually the discomfort of sharing a time of remembrance with the communist East could be averted. A new possibility was found not in the commemoration of events from the Nazi past but one of much more recent origin. That was 17 June, adopted into the West German memorial calendar after the events in the GDR in 1953, but of course quite mute on the vexed issue of how the Federal Republic might relate to its Nazi past. Moreover, the
66 Ibid.
changing official attitudes in the SBZ to antisemitism in late 1948 and in 1949 see Jutta Illichmann, Die DDR und die Juden: Die deutschlandpolitische Instrumentalisierung von Juden und Judentum durch die Partei und Staatsfhrung der SBZ/DDR von 1945 bis 1990 (Frankfurt/Main, 1997), pp. 7475, 8287. See also Mario Kessler, Die SED und die Judenzwischen Repression und Toleranz: Politische Entwicklungen bis 1967 (Berlin, 1995), pp. 5657. 68 Peter Reichel, Politik mit der Erinnerung: Gedchtnisorte im Streit um die nationalsozialistische Vergangenheit (Munich, 1995), p. 269.
67 On
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Day of German Unity, as it was called, was never able to garner much public support, let alone enthusiasm. The more it was celebrated, the more it became a public calamity.69 As for the GDR, it maintained its commitment to its commemorations on the second Sunday of every September over the full four decades of its existence. The almost seamless transition from the Days of Remembrance observed in the SBZ through to those in the GDR was evident in September 1950, the first Day of Remembrance after the GDRs foundation eleven months earlier. Not only was the outward appearance indistinguishable from previous years, the content too matched the focus on contemporary events so evident in the recent past. Just how politicized the VVNs understanding of the day had become was clear enough in its planning for the event: Under the leadership of the FIAPP and the VVN, with the full support of all democratic parties and mass organizations and all progressive people, it declared, the Day of Remembrance would be a protest for peace directed against the Anglo-American warmongers and the rebirth of fascism in West Germany.70 Beneath the surface though, the projected unity of political purpose was murkier. Strongly guided by Communist interests though the VVN had undoubtedly been from its very inception in 1947, it remained nonetheless a mass organization containing a gamut of interests. Communist domination did not necessarily equate to ideological homogeneity in the VVN. A sign of discontent was delivered in September 1948, when Heinrich Grber resigned his post as Vice President of the VVN in the SBZ. Officially it was for health reasons; in reality it was because Grber had become disillusioned, especially as a result of the Day of Remembrance earlier that month, with the blatantly anti-Western course which had been adopted.71 Similarly, the Main Committee of the Berlin VVN, in reviewing the events of just a few days earlier, acknowledged self-critically in a report of 22 September 1948 that the events of 12 September that year had been dragged in a politically one-sided manner into the controversies of the day.72 There were further signs that beneath the surface not everyone was pleased with the directions the memorial culture of the SBZ had been taking even before the GDR was founded. Among the VVNs own members were those who held severe reservations about the SEDs decision to establish two new parties in 1948, namely the Demokratische Bauernpartei Deutschlands (DBD, Democratic Farmers Party of Germany) and the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NDPD, National Democratic Party of Germany). Worse was to follow in the following year with the foundation of the National Front, since, from the perspective of sceptics in the VVN, all of these new organizations were part of an SED-driven process of reintegrating former Nazis and supporters of Nazism. Their very existence was an affront to those who held a genuine commitment to upholding the antifascist legacy.73
69 Lutz
Niethammer, Wir wollen nicht mehr Sklaven sein: Kollegen reiht euch ein!, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (9 Nov. 1990). Cited in Reichel, Politik mit der Erinnerung, p. 269. 70 Arbeitsplan des Zentralvorstandes der VVN in der DDR JuliSept. 1950, SAPMO-Barch. Unterlagen des ZK der SED/ Sekretariat Lehmann DY 30/IV 2/2.027/32. 71 Heinrich Grber, Erinnerungen aus sieben Jahrzehnten (Cologne and Berlin, 1968), pp. 253ff. Cited in Reuter and Hansel, Das kurze Leben der VVN, p. 276. 72 Landesarchiv Berlin, IV L-2/15/019. Cited in Reuter and Hansel, Das kurze Leben der VVN, p. 201. 73 On discontent within the VVN at the SEDs policies at this time see especially Jrn Schrtrumpf, Besprechungen zwischen ehemaligen VVN-Kameraden drfen nicht mehr stattfinden. Antifaschismus in der DDR, in Dieter Vorsteher (ed.), Parteiauftrag: Ein neues Deutschland. Bilder, Rituale und Symbole der frhen DDR (Munich and Berlin, 1997), pp. 14252.
It is apparent that this discontent with SED policy from within the ranks of VVN survived the SBZ and continued into the early years of the GDR. In a 1950 internal report the VVN set as one of its main tasks: The fight against sectarianism in the VVN for the purpose of removing ideological weaknesses for the successful achievement of political goals.74 This was a thinly veiled way of signalling an intention of acting against those who objected to the official, pragmatic and integrative brand of antifascist memory promoted by the SED. It was followed in late 1952 and early 1953 by a series of events which were similarly inimical to any claim the VVN might still have made that it stood above party politics, namely a fresh and even more vicious wave of antisemitism, again flowing from Moscow. Such was the intensity of it that on this occasion it sponsored not just a spate of withdrawals from the VVN but hurried exits from the GDR of hundreds of members of its Jewish communities.75 In the end, however, instead of imposing ideological uniformity on the VVN from above, the SED simply, and with almost no warning, dissolved the organization in February 1953. Many of its functions were inherited by its successor, the Komitee der antifaschistischen Widerstandskmpfer (KdAW, Committee of Antifascist Resistance Fighters). The choice of name was doubly significant. In designating its members fighters it confirmed the marginalization of those who had only suffered, of whom Jews were numerically by far the largest group. Moreover, labelling the successor organization a committee, consisting as it now did of government-appointed members with no mass membership to represent, spoke volumes for its newly assigned place in the GDR. As for the annual Day of Remembrance, responsibility for organizing it was inherited in large part by the KdAW but shared also with the National Front, loathed though that organization was by many former members of the VVN.76 The new arrangements had little effect on the outward appearance of the annual commemorative activities in the Lustgarten on the second Sunday of every September. But the plurality of interestsor perhaps sectarianismof earlier versions of the occasions was not to be restored in the GDRs lifetime.
Conclusions Among the crowds who witnessed the Day of Remembrance in 1947 was Alfred Kantorowicz. One can barely imagine an antifascist with better credentials: Kantorowicz had joined the KPD in 1931, had fought in the Spanish Civil War, had gone into exile in France and then the USA, and then returned to Germanyby his own choice to the SBZ at the end of 1946. As a prominent figure whose life was distinguished by a visceral and enduring antifascism, it is no surprise that some time after his return he was invited to the Lustgarten to address the annual rally. The next day he recorded the experience in his diary:
Yesterday was the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Fascism. Moving re-acquaintance with old comrades. I was to say a few words. It was no celebratory address. We were not victorious. For us the battle
74 Arbeitsplan
des Zentralvorstandes der VVN in der DDR JuliSept. 1950, SAPMO-Barch. Unterlagen des ZK der SED/ Sekretariat Lehmann DY 30/IV 2/2.027/32. 75 On the consequences of this wave of Stalinist antisemitism see Lothar Mertens, Davidstern und Hammer und Zirkel: Die Jdischen Gemeinden in der SBZ/DDR und ihre Behandlung durch Partei und Staat 19451990 (Hildesheim, 1997), pp. 5361, also Kessler, Die SED und die Juden, pp. 85105; Illichmann, Die DDR und die Juden, pp. 79111. 76 Jrn Schtrumpf, Besprechungen zwischen ehemaligen VVN-Kameraden, p. 151.
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continues. There are few of us. Some are tired. But if the few of us become simply a club of war veterans with big bellies or saintly figures, put on display once a year for people to gape at us, then everything we have done and all we have suffered has been in vain. Then those of whom we are thinking, to whose example we appeal, need not have died. Whoever now becomes comfortable, whoever yields to authority unconditionally, no longer has a place. This has been understood. Victims of Fascism who survived in the camps and in Spain are not well suited to being conformists, submissive back-scratchers, toadies and zealous yes-men.77
Attending just the third Day of Remembrance, Kantorowicz already sensed that a gaping chasm was opening up between vernacular memory and the official memory which was being imposed on the event. As an avowed antifascist, Kantorowicz of all people should have fully engaged with the rally and its intentions. Instead, his account conveys a clear sense of the danger of alienation and detachment. It was not the case that this chasm between vernacular and official memory had opened up overnight. On the contrary, the desire to impose a narrow, exclusive memory was present from the beginning. Moreover, it stemmed not from the Soviet authorities but primarily from within German Communist circles. Even before the first Day of Remembrance in 1945 some German antifascists themselves had made efforts to marginalize mere victimsabove all Jewsfor the purpose of extolling the fighters. And at that first Day of Remembrance, the ubiquitous symbolism of the red triangle indicated that even among the fighters a kind of hierarchy of memory was already being installed. That process was acceleratedbut not initiatedwith the onset of the Cold War. The imposition of official memory meant that one of the key functions of the first Day of Remembrance, namely the provision of an opportunity for collective grieving and mourning, was lost. At the same time the circle of antifascists being remembered grew ever smaller. While Jewish persecution, for example, was still at least being acknowledged in 1948, and indeed the creation of the state of Israel celebrated, by the time the East German state was founded in the following year the list of officially honoured antifascists had been reduced to representatives of the political left, the bearers of the red triangle. Moreover, it became increasingly apparent that they were honoured only on the condition that they had made the full transition from active resisters against fascism to compliant, uncritical supporters of the new order. There was to be no place for the representatives of sectarianism in official East German memory, just as there was little sympathy for those who were not prepared to forget the complicity of many of their fellow citizens. The tendencies Kantorowicz noted in 1947 were not to be reverseddisillusioned with real existing antifascism, he left the GDR for the West a decade later. Finally, the triumph of official memory in the East both reflected and was shaped by similar processes in the West. French and above all American attempts to inhibit commemorative activities on the Day of Remembrance served to stifle any hope that a unifying postwar German identity might have emerged from common acts of grieving for fascisms victims and of acknowledging the burden of collective guilt. Separate memorial cultures mirrored and reinforced the growing political divide. When the Federal Republic finally opted for 17 June as its national Day of Remembrance, it sought above all to distinguish itself from its Communist neighbour. When the GDR imposed a
77 Alfred Kantorowicz, Deutsches Tagebuch I (Munich, 1959), p. 327. Cited ibid., p. 146.
narrow and highly politicized function on its Day of Remembrance, in which Communist resisters held centre stage, it sought to distance itself from the West. On both sides, the rhetoric of their respective Days of Remembrance featured an abusive condemnation of the others present rather than an engagement with ones own past. Only in their vigorous attempts to distinguish themselves from the other did the memorial cultures of the two Germanies bear any similarity. Official memory on both sides of the Iron Curtain was characterized by an inability to mournto borrow the Mitscherlichs perceptive phrase78and a detachment from the firsthand historical experiences of the people who lived there. For John Bodnar the separation of vernacular from official memory is by no means an inevitability. He cites the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington as an example of public memory located at the intersection of official and vernacular cultural expressions. Though its origins lay in the vernacular culture of ordinary people directly involved in the war, it could also accommodate official culture, because national political leaders saw in the monument a device that would foster national unity and patriotism.79 But what happens when there is no such intersection, as in the case of East Gemanys Day of Remembrance? What are the effects of an imposed official memory bearing little resemblance to peoples memories of their own experiences? An answer may be found in a letter written in a state whose history was not so different from that of the GDR, namely Czechoslovakia. There, too, vernacular memory of the experience of the war and of the creation of a postwar Communist order had been supplanted by an official memory intolerant of diversity and detached from lived experience. In 1975 the then dissident Vclav Havel penned an open letter to the President, Gustav Husk, and described how in this process of the imposition of an official memory,
one has the impression that for some time there has been no history. Slowly but surely, we are losing the sense of time. We begin to forget what happened when, what came earlier and what later, and the feeling that it really doesnt matter overwhelms us.80
Havels words go some way to explaining the course of events in his own country and its German neighbour. Where official memory fails to intersect with vernacular memory, the goal of winning popular support for a stable national order and enduring loyalty to the status quo is doomed.
Postscript Strangely, perhaps, there is a postscript to this history of the GDRs Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Fascism. Just as the event had a history before the founding of the GDR in 1949, so it had a history at the very end of the GDR and beyond. The song Brder, zur Sonne, zur Freiheit, with which the annual September rally had traditionally concluded, was
78 The
psychologists Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich used this phrase in the title of their 1967 book Die Unfhigkeit zu trauern: Grundlagen kollektiven Verhaltens, which examined the failure of Germans to come to terms with the Nazi past during the Adenauer era. 79 Bodnar, Remaking America, p. 13. 80 Vclav Havel, Dear Dr Husk, in Open Letters: Selected Writings, 19641990 (New York, 1991) pp. 7374. Cited in Claudia Koonz, Between Memory and Oblivion: Concentration Camps in German Memory, in John R. Gillis (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, 1994), p. 258.
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heard among those taking part in the demonstrations in Leipzig in 1989.81 Subtly, the states own foundation myth of antifascism was being directed against it; a vernacular memory was beginning to stir. Then in the wake of the GDRs collapse, the Day of Remembrance itself was revived. Though deprived of its state support and its official raison dtre, it became a day of remembrance in search of new meanings. For some years on the usual day in September activities continued to be held in the Lustgarten, though more recently the site has shifted a few hundred metres to the Marx-Engels-Platz. The new venue is currently invested with a certain symbolic significanceit is in the shadow of the GDRs Palast der Republik as it is being dismantled, step by step, and thus consigned, like the state that produced it, to the dustbin of history. Nowadays the label for the event is Day of Action against Racism, Neonazism and War.82 In some ways, it seems, the end of the GDR was something of a liberation; hundreds of groups have participated in the event since 1990, ranging from the African National Congress of South Africa/GDR through to an association for the promotion of progressive culture called Zwischenwelt. The diversity of interests evident in the first years has easily been exceeded, while the function of fostering national political unity and patriotism has disappeared without a trace. The return of vernacular memory is complete, but hardly triumphant.83
Abstract
This article examines the initiation and development of the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Fascism (Gedenktag fr die Opfer des Faschismus) in the Soviet Zone of Occupation and then the GDR. In doing so it is interested in the way in which the annual event, held on the second Sunday of September, was politicized, especially during the onset of the Cold War, which meant that it became a regular feature of official memory in the GDR but was abandoned in the Federal Republic. The theoretical framework is drawn from John Bodnars distinction between official and vernacular expressions of public memory. The initial observance of the Day of Remembrance is notable for the presence of vernacular elementsthe day was initiated by people who had suffered Nazi persecution, it was supported by a broad range of victims, and it contained elements of mourning and contrition. However, a process of political appropriation commenced as early as 1945 and reached a culminating point with the divided rallies of West and East Berlin in 1948. Communist forces both German and Sovietplayed a major role in this, but the hand of other occupying forces is also evident in efforts to restrict the impact of what was conceived as a national event. Over the course of the GDRs history the day became increasingly ritualized, so that its capacity to perform its initial functions was severely compromised. Only with German unification and a modest reinvention of the event has a vernacular form of remembrance been given some scope to re-emerge. Keywords: German Democratic Republic, remembrance, memorials, Cold War, Division of Germany, victims of fascism
Flinders University, Adelaide peter.monteath@flinders.edu.au
81 as fn. 30 above. 82 See the website at www.tag-der-mahnung.de. 83 I am grateful to Susanne zur Nieden for carrying out much of the original research for this paper in Berlin.

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German History Vol. 26, No. 2, pp.

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22 Berliner Zeitung (4 Sept. 1945), p. 3. 23 Former

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Bestand Opfer des FaschismusAusschsse, Hauptausschuss und Landesausschsse, p. 154.

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Flinders University, Adelaide peter.monteath@flinders.edu.au

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