Under a Blue Sky

Posted on August 11, 2014 by Christian Herrmann under Eastern Galicia, Jewish Cemeteries

When I woke up the sky was deep blue, the weather report promised 35 degrees. I decided to stay in the city and to walk to the Jewish cemetery and the nearby former concentration camp site. It was a sad walk.

Lviv Jewish cemetery

Janowska concentration camp site

Lviv Jewish cemetery

Janowska concentration camp site

Temporary memorial to the war in the east of the country

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Starzawa – one of the many forgotten Holocaust sites

Posted on July 13, 2014 by Christian Herrmann under Eastern Galicia

Prof. Józef Lipman is one of the few Holocaust survivors from Boryslaw, Galicia. Together with Klaus Hasbron-Blume and other volunteers of Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ASF), he returned to Boryslaw in the fall of 2013 for the first time since the war. In Starzawa he met Stefania, his former nanny. Klaus and the volunteers of ASF visited Stefania again this year. Klaus has documented this visit in a short note that deeply moved me, and I therefore reproduce it here.

Prof. Lipman and Stefania

Stefania’s list

Stefania and her family

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Ukraine between Past and Future – A Travel Report

Posted on May 26, 2014 by Christian Herrmann under Eastern Galicia, Northern Bukovina

Zurich Lab, a Swiss based institute that wants “psychoanalysis to meet the streets”, has published an essay of mine about my Ukraine trip in February. I am aware that some of the theses in the essay are controversial for some readers. However, I believe there are necessary discussions about history, remembrance and identity. Without it there is no self-confident future – just conspiracy theories.

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Memories of a lost childhood: the German occupation of Poland in World War II from the perspective of a Jewish child

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Christian Herrmann under Eastern Galicia

Professor Józef Lipman was a child, when German troops occupied his hometown Boryslav (Boryslaw) in Eastern Galicia. Lipman is one of 150 survivors of the former Jewish community of Boryslaw which before the war had 18,000 members. In 2007, in a speech in Görlitz, Saxony, he described his experiences. Every line of it is worth reading – in order to never forget.

Before the war: Józef Lipman with cousin Rózia Grynszpan, mother and aunts. Behind Józef (from left to right): aunt Regina, mother Etka Lipman, aunt Fanka and aunt Zofia © Józef Lipman

Cousin Tusiek Lippman with dog. Tusiek was shot in 1944. © Józef Lipman

Grandmother Ryfka (Rebeka) Lippman, imprisoned in cinema Collosseum, then shot with hundreds of Jewish citizens of Boryslaw. © Józef Lipman

Identity card for slave worker Abraham Lippman (father of Józef Lipman) © Józef Lipman

Former movie theater Collosseum, where Jews of Boryslaw where kept before extermination. Now the building is used as a greek-catholic church. © Klaus Hasbron-Blume

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Journey through Galicia and Bukovina in May and April 2013 – Some Thoughts

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Christian Herrmann under Eastern Galicia, Jewish Cemeteries, Northern Bukovina, Synagogues

Two weeks I traveled with my friends Petra and Achim through Eastern Galicia and Northern Bukovina. It was a very intense and emotional journey to the heritage of a vanished Jewish world. We visited 27 towns and villages, many spots made a deep impression. With some distance I would like to summarize some experiences and reflect them. What did we see? Who commemorates what and how? And I want to thank all those people who enabled the journey in many different ways and observed it with passion.

Conservation problems at the well maintained cemetery of Busk

Conservation works in Brody

Destructions in Rohatyn

Destructions in Berezhani

Remains of the residence of the Sadagora Rebbe

Well maintained cemetery in Vyzhnytsia

Destructions and renewal works in Kuty

Destructions in Ivano-Frankivsk

Well maintained cemetery in Kalush

Remains of the synagogue in Bolekhiv

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Landscape after a Genocide

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Christian Herrmann under Eastern Galicia

Next to the village of Lysynychi – now a suburb of Lviv (Lwow, Lemberg) – tens of thousands of people were murdered by the SS and their helpers. No one knows how many. The numbers vary between 50,000 and 200,000. The victims were mainly Jews, but also members of the Polish resistance, Russian prisoners of war and thousands of Italian soldiers who were massacred by the Germans after the capitulation of Italy. Does something commemorate these crimes and their victims in the forest of Lysynychi? Today I was there.

Lysynychi – possible mass graves

Lysynychi – view down to the former camp

Lysynychi – asphalt factory

Lysynychi – small white flowers

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The Leather Suitcase

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Christian Herrmann under Northern Bukovina

This is a poem by Tom Berman, the great-grandson of Lazar Igel, the first Rabbi of the Czernowitz Temple. Tom died a few days ago in the Galapagos islands; it was a life-long dream of him to go there. Tom survived Nazi dictatorship over huge parts of Europe through the “Kindertransport” to England. His family was erased. The poem reflects this. Tom immigrated to Israel and became an internationaly known scientist. He survived the time of persecution by 68 years.

Tomb of Lazar Igel at Czernowitz Jewish cemetery

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Travel Plans are almost complete

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Christian Herrmann under Eastern Galicia, Northern Bukovina

From April 21 to May 5 I go to Ukraine again. With me are two good friends, an old camera, a bunch of black and white films, a lot of travel plans and one of the most terrible books I have ever read. I hope to report from the trip while traveling. Do you have recommendations?

Trip preparations – my camera

Trip preparations – a map

Trip preparations – Leon Wells’ book

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Willing to Know the Truth

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Christian Herrmann under Eastern Ukraine

Mariia Ginzburg is the founder of the “404 – Unknown Pages” project, a group of mostly young people in Kharkiv who explore hidden sites of Ukrainian history. By asking survivors they investigate an unknown chapter of the Holocaust: Jews who fled Ukraine when the German army was advancing. Mariia’s team consists of people of different age, nationality and profession. The future has begun. An interview.

404 – Unknown Pages meeting in Kharkiv. © 404 – Unknown Pages

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Lessons from Yanovska

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Christian Herrmann under Eastern Galicia

Yanovska, a former concentration camp in Lviv, was among the locations of horror during the German occupation of Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, this place is largely unknown. What would be the benefit if we knew more about it? And what is needed to happen, so we can learn something from Yanovska?