Students of the Hector-Peterson Grammar School do research on memorial sites in Berlin in order to learn about the local victims of the Holocaust and to artistically revive the memorial plaque for the murdered Jewish teachers of their school.


Every morning on their way to Hector-Peterson Grammar School, the students pass by a memorial plaque which is fixed onto the outer wall of the school building.  It commemorates four teachers of the school who were “dismissed from school, persecuted and murdered by the Nazis because of their Jewish faith”, as the inscription puts it.  Erich Bandmann, then a liaison teacher, was murdered during a transport to a concentration camp in Riga in 1942.  Oskar Beer was deported in 1942 as well, but down to the present day it has remained unknown how and when he died.  And what happened to Charlotte Hurwitz and Rudolph Lehmann is not known either.

In 1998 a former student, Eva Freeman, inspired her school to commemorate the fate of the four Jewish teachers by donating a memorial plaque.  On the left side of the plaque you can see a group of desperate and mourning people, on the right there is a portrait of Erich Bandmann.  In between a small text commemorates the four teachers.  The current headmaster Dietmar Pagel wondered whether his students take notice of the plaque at all, and if they did, whether they were aware of its historical significance to their school or not.  After all, the sculpture could be an excellent starting point for further projects in addition to history and arts lessons.  This is how the concept of a new memorial project developed.  What is the use of exclusively dealing with the commemoration of the four teachers if the students disregard the Holocaust as a whole?

Berlin - a place where history comes alive

One of the reasons why Berlin is so popular with visitors from all over the world is its history.  You simply cannot overlook the numerous scars and traces, whether they were left by the postwar occupying powers, the ruling bloc in the GDR, or the Nazis and their many victims.  Berlin is a perfect place for a teacher to take students by the hand and show them all the places they can find in their books, but also the lesser known ones.  Dietmar Pagel, who is not only the headmaster but also a history teacher, and his colleague Cornelia Lengfeld, an arts teacher, had the idea of taking their pupils to various memorial places in Berlin: the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe near the Brandenburg Gate, the exhibition “Topography of Terror” about the Secret State Police in Nazi Germany, the Jewish Museum, and other smaller sites.  The “Stolpersteine” (stumbling blocks) for example are small brass plates to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust.  “Stolpersteine” is a history project initiated by the Cologne-based artist Gunter Demnig who has installed more than 15.000 of these plates in front of the last attested residences of the victims of the Nazis before they were deported.  Many of the Stolpersteine can be found in Berlin.

The Holocaust happened right on our doorstep

The Hector-Peterson Grammar School is situated in Kreuzberg, one of the most deprived areas of Berlin.  More than 80 percent of the students at the school have an immigrant background (most of them with a Turkish or Arab origin).  The number of white German students is decreasing, a sign of the general social disintegration of the district.  The social problems of the district are reflected in the social behavior of the students.  A considerable number of the pupils’ families come from Lebanon or Palestine, and thus the project faces a particular challenge because anti-Semitic prejudices are widespread among many of these families.  On the other hand, this challenge adds an exciting new facet of the project.

The idea of the school project at Hector-Peterson Grammar School is to help the students grasp the horror of the Holocaust.  Dietmar Pagel is convinced that the best way to reach this aim is by showing students that the Holocaust is not something that merely happened in some far away places, such as Auschwitz or Buchenwald.  He wants them to engage with the little stories about local places in Berlin so that they may grasp that the real tragedy happened right on our doorstep.  The project includes a visit to a Kreuzberg hospital where a memorial plaque commemorates the persecution of Jewish doctors.  The students will be asked to analyze this specific site and other memorial sites with regard to the messages and artistic effects.  They will do their research by taking photographs and filling out questionnaires.  The real challenge is to come up with a variety of topics that might help arouse interest in the project among fellow students and teachers.  In the end, the students will use their ideas and findings in order to develop “artistic signs” (made of ceramic, wood and stone) to call attention to the memorial plaque on their schoolyard.


Jan Schwab

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