City tour in Neunkirchen (Saarland) with ideas on the topic of ‘peace’
On 20 September, a dozen members of Ad Pacem took part in a city tour in Neunkirchen (Saarland) at the invitation of parish worker Katja Groß. This took place on the occasion of ‘Intercultural Week & Fair Week’.
The tour had five stops. At each one, explanations, meditations, prayers and songs were offered.
Before moving on to the next stop, a young person from the group spray-painted a logo representing the three symbols of the monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and an angel.
The first stop was at ‘momentum’, a meeting centre of the Diocese of Trier in Neunkirchen. Here, the participants introduced themselves. The French guests were able to follow everything thanks to simultaneous translations. This was also the case throughout the entire tour.
Then they continued on foot to the second station, a Spitzbunker, a relic from the Second World War. Here, one of the people in charge explained the purpose of this bunker, which could seat up to 400 people and provide shelter during the many Allied air raids on the local rail and armaments production facilities. At the end of the Second World War, there were a total of 40 air-raid shelters at the ironworks. The tower consists of eight floors with 12 toilets. Access was via wooden stairs on the second and third floors. All floors are naturally ventilated through gas-tight, lockable pipe connections. The ventilation system with its filters is located at the top of the tower and could be operated manually in the event of a power failure. Communication between the individual floors was via speaking tubes.
The third stop was at the forced labourers’ memorial. It was completed in 1997/2015 by Japanese artist Seiji Kimoto, who lived in Neunkirchen.
It is a memorial to the foreign workers in Neunkirchen. The names on the pedestal, ‘Jean, Alberto, Antonia, Stanislaw, Maria, Sergey’, represent the 3,000 people who were forced to work as forced labourers in the Neunkirchen ironworks, coal mines or agriculture during the Second World War. They came from all over Europe. They were held in 22 camps scattered across the city. Around 400 of these people died of exhaustion, illness and abuse by the end of the war.
Explanations about the memorial itself: two human figures stand facing each other on a concrete pedestal. One is an emaciated figure made of green copper, a battered forced labourer who is tied down and shoulders a 7.70-metre-high steel beam, against whose weight she is straining, and the other is an almost larger-than-life template figure who is not helping but watching or looking away, a guard or an indifferent bystander. The remains of a brick wall at one corner of the plinth are intended to remind us of the barracks in which the forced labourers had to live.
The fourth stop led to the Marian Column in front of the Roman Catholic Church of St. Mary. It is made of grey cast iron from the Neunkirchen ironworks. The local sculptor, Hans Bogler, completed the work in 1954.
Afterwards, the interior of St. Mary’s Church was visited.
At this station, everyone was able to reflect on the following questions:
– Does peace begin with me and my own thoughts?
– What is my next step as an advocate for more peace in the world?
– If I want to be a role model for love and reconciliation, how should I behave? How will my fellow human beings notice this?
The logo ‘swords to ploughshares’ was briefly discussed.
The fifth station led to the Turkish-Islamic Community Centre. Here, there was an encounter and exchange with the person in charge and administrator of the centre. He explained how the centre was organised and what social function it pursued. The subsequent discussion focused on interfaith dialogue. In this regard, there is still much to be done to promote and advance mutual encounters between religious communities.
Afterwards, we returned to ‘momentum’, where the city tour had begun about three hours earlier.
The event concluded here with a delicious cold buffet for all participants.
