New ways in the culture of remembrance

By Clarisse Cossais and Christian W. Find

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How to keep memories of the Holocaust alive, even if there will soon be no more contemporary witnesses? The rapper Dan Wolf relies on art: He gives workshops for young people at places of remembrance. For example in the Ravensbrück concentration camp memorial.

“If you don't have a culture of remembrance, what are you trying to forget? That has become a big question in my work: What are we always trying to forget? ”  

Summer 2019. In a large room in the Ravensbrück memorial north of Berlin. Dan Wolf welcomes forty young people, all from different countries. For a week they develop a performance with him, teachers, and artists, which they then present to an audience. Sound, dance and rap are her means of expression. And they meet survivors of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, get to know them personally in order to deal with their history and that of the place. What is happening here is not just a tour of a memorial.

For a long time Dan Wolf knows nothing of his German roots

Dan Wolf is the coordinator and artistic director of this project. A youthful-looking man with a strong voice. A bundle of energy. The 45-year-old American lives in San Francisco and is a rapper. His family history has its roots in Germany, more precisely in Hamburg. For a long time Dan Wolf knew little about it. He had heard of ancestors from Germany and Poland, but nothing more specific. It wasn't until 1999, when the Hamburg filmmaker Jens Huckeriede became aware of him and went to see him, that he found out more about his family history. Huckeriede, who has since passed away, wanted to make a film about "The Wolf Brothers". 

 “And then I researched that the Wolf brothers were the first entertainment stars in Hamburg who were not only known in Hamburg, but were also very often in Berlin and also performed abroad. And the more I asked, the more I got the answer that no one can remember her. And that was the beginning of this entire project for me, I'll say it in the spirit of Joseph Beuys, a “social sculpture” - how do you bring forgotten, important artists back into the collective memory of a city?

The Wolf brothers are known throughout Germany 100 years ago. They composed the Hamburg hit song "An de Eck steiht'n Jung mit'n Tüdelband". The Marx Brothers from Germany - incredibly popular. In 1938 they had to emigrate. As Jews, they were persecuted by the Nazi regime. During his research, Jens Huckeriede found out that Leopold Wolf still has a great-grandson in San Francisco: Dan Wolf.

 “When Jens came to San Francisco to meet me, he asked me if I knew who Ludwig Wolf was or Leopold Wolf. I didn't know the names so I said I don't know and he asked me who the Wolf brothers were and I said I have no idea. These questions started a whole series of discoveries for me, ”says Dan Wolf.

“I had just moved to San Francisco then, on one side of the park, and my grandmother lived on the other. I spent a lot of time with her. One day my father forwarded an email my grandmother had received from this German filmmaker. She just said: 'Oh what does this German want from me, leave me alone!' My grandmother was like that, very direct, whatever came out of her mouth was like 'Tschumm'! And then my father said: 'Dan, you are the artist! You do that to him. ' At about the same time my father gave me a letter from my grandfather Donat, who was the son of one of the Wolf brothers. Donat had started writing a letter to my sister and me in 1977 on the day my sister was born. He finished it in 1984, the year he died. The letter was 42 pages long in which he tried to tell us his life story. I think he knew he was at the end of his life. When I opened the letter, it was so full of strength for me. "

“To the grandchildren Daniel and Jessica. I sat down to write this letter to you one day after you, Jessica, were born. I hope it will fall into your hands at a time when you can not only read the words but understand what I am trying to tell you. " 

Then the last line. It made him cry, says Dan Wolf.  

"It could be that by the time you read this letter that I, your grandfather, am no longer alive." 

"Here is the material for your next piece"

"Whoa. My father just said, 'Here's the material for your next piece,' when he gave me the letter. I read this introduction and started crying. We went to dinner and I remember that I didn't eat anything and how I just sat there with this letter, ”says Dan Wolf.

“Because that was the first answer when I asked who I am and where I am going. And where do I come from. 42 pages on which he told me and my sister who he was personally. Where he got drunk in Hamburg, what school he went to there, the friends he had in Hamburg before the war. The betrayal by them, the friendship with these people that broke off after the war, the story of his first love for a German girl he tried to marry, and then it was published in a Nazi newspaper. How he then fell in love with his first wife, the birth of her son, the death of his first wife and son. Then the meeting of my grandparents in Shanghai and then the arrival in San Francisco. "

At the same time that Dan Wolf received the letter, Jens Huckeriede was researching the history of the Wolf brothers. 

“I flew to San Francisco and met Dan Wolf there. And I explained to him who his ancestors were because he knew very little about his history, and that was quite interesting. ” 

“ I felt a bit unsure whether I should go to this meeting and deal with Jens, ”remembers himself Dan.

“I didn't yet know who this man was, who was telling me the story of my family and who would fundamentally change my whole life. Who should soon change my focus to everything that is important to me and who I want to be as an adult. ”

“ I don't even know what he understood from what I said about the Tütelbandlied and so on and so on “, Says Jens Huckenriede.

“In any case, I told him that I wanted to make a film that starts with folk music and ends with hip-hop today and he thought that was very exciting, then he told me he was a hip-hopper too, gave me a CD and for me a circle was closed. "

There is a spark between Wolf and the filmmaker

"At the time, I just wanted to be a famous actor, a famous rapper, and so I treated him like a filmmaker that I auditioned," says Dan Wolf.

“I think that was what connected him and the story of his film to me, because the Wolf brothers also used rhythm and rhymes for their stories, freestyle with theatrical means, in which they talked about the problems and challenges of the politics of the time . For Jens, I think, that was something that connected the generations. ”

The spark between Jens Huckeriede and Dan Wolf jumped - and Dan soon crossed over to Hamburg for the shooting of the film“ Return of the Tüdelband ”.

“And then - typically Jens, he just said: 'Come on, we're going to the museum now.' And I said, 'Ok, let's go to the museum!' It was the Museum of Hamburg History. There was a press conference with the Senator for Culture. I went in there and thought this was a normal museum visit and suddenly everyone was so interested in me and my family's history. Then I just knew it was bigger than just going to your grandparents' town. There is more going on! That was the beginning of my interest in the history of the Wolf family. "

Dan's empathy and energy carry everyone away

Wednesday morning - halftime at the one-week workshop at the Ravensbrück memorial: Dan Wolf explains a game to the young people. It's about attention. Everyone has to keep an eye on everyone, you clap each other and pass on the clapping. The mood among each other is good. 

As the artistic coordinator, Dan Wolf is primarily responsible for keeping the group together. The young people should feel comfortable during these stressful and emotionally charged days. It helps create the performance that wants to show the result of their personal engagement with this place. Where 120,000 women, 20,000 men and 1,200 girls were held captive and tortured during World War II. 

It is his great empathy and energy that everyone gets carried away with:

“I look into many expectant eyes that are fixed on me when I talk about the project on the first day. The participants come from everywhere. And me? I'm just the crazy American, the only American in the room and I'm the one in charge! Eagle owl! You might refuse to participate. But I think it's this energy that drives everyone. I'm not one of those people who constantly stresses out little things. I think as long as you are not comfortable and you have a goal in mind, things will happen by themselves. "

Against the guardians of the grail of remembrance culture

Jens Huckeriede, too, was always noticeably withdrawn when working with the young people. He developed his concept for this new form of memory and the personal appropriation of history from his own preoccupation with Germany's Jewish past: 

“In 1993 I met a 70-year-old woman, the daughter of the last rabbi of Hamburg, Miriam Gilles-Kanebach, and had a very moving interview with her. Because I didn't even know what questions to ask this old woman whose parents and three children were murdered in Riga. And after this interview it actually became clear to me what do we actually do with the culture of remembrance in Germany when these contemporary witnesses are no longer there? And since then I've actually been working on the forms, looking for new ways in which we can remember. And where it is not about political correctness and not what is now determined - in quotation marks - Grail Guardians, who actually say how the culture of remembrance should run in this country, that you move away from it and find your own way. "

He began to work on this concept together with Dan Wolf, who now traveled to Hamburg more often. Finally both drove to Neuengamme to the nearby memorial of the former concentration camp:

“I came to Neuengamme and saw the trees and thought about the souls of the women who had been there and was inspired to a rap. About my feelings that I had at that moment. I filmed the trees in the wind and put my voice over it with the wind and rap. And I think Jens saw me start to embody this idea of ​​memory. Before I really understood what it was, ”says Dan Wolf. 

“That's when I realized the power of realizing how we can use the past to understand the meaning of the present. And hopefully that has a future too. All this went through my head when I heard what Jens really meant with this new form of memory. Because he wanted to get money for the project from people who said that there can be no connection between the Holocaust and Hip-Hop. " 

Both called their project “Sound in the Silence” and in 2001 they found an institution in the Hamburg cultural center “Motte” under whose roof their idea began to take shape. Its head Michael Wendt - a close friend of Jens Huckeriede - was just as impressed by the project as Griet Gäthke, a Motte employee. She began to establish contact with many schools and institutions, documented every step of the work and obtained funding, which cost a lot of persuasion:

“So a hip-hop event at a memorial! There were people who immediately understood what we wanted and that it is important to find new ways to appeal to young people, to interest them. But historians or the classical associations in particular were initially negative. They said we couldn't do that, approach the difficult parts of history with art and then hip-hop and then at memorials. That was inconceivable. "

A hip-hop event in a concentration camp memorial

Those responsible at the Ravensbrück memorial found it quite conceivable. The head of the educational service Matthias Heyl already knew Jens Huckeriede from his Hamburg times: 

 “That was really the desire to look for a different form of memory, for a form that also reached its limits. But I was already clear from the collaboration with Jens Huckeriede that he is a frontier workers that he also always consciously look where one side of the border is the one not to go. "

Jens Huckeriede was happy more To have found allies for his idea:

“In school, pupils learn what history was like or how it is in the books. You can read it, talk about it, keep it or not. The main difference in this project is that they absorb something emotionally. They take that with them, and they will keep it. ”In

 2006 Dan Wolf met his rapper colleagues Tommy Shepherd and Mad Max in Ravensbrück for the first time, at the invitation of Matthias Heyl.

“Another important moment was when we were sitting in this bookstore in Ravensbrück, at the entrance where the tours start,” remembers Dan Wolf.

“Jens and Matthias looked at me and said: 'Okay, Dan start with your hip-hop workshop.' Tommy and Max began to express their feelings in rap. You said exactly what I wanted to say. They knew what to do. I suddenly felt that I couldn't talk about it yet, that I didn't have the language for it, but that I could express myself here. You could. I just thought we had to come back and appropriate this place. "

"Those who can suffer and want to live can endure anything"

“Young people always ask me, how can you survive this, and what is my answer? Anyone who can suffer and wants to live can endure anything. We have to survive to tell the world and warn the world that this cannot happen again. If I hear about neo-Nazis in Germany today, I feel sick . ” Batscheva Dagan survived the Shoah. She was 15 when the Nazis deported her from Poland, first to Auschwitz and then to Ravensbrück. Born in Poland, the 95-year-old now lives in Israel. She has dealt with her past in many books and poems. 

Since 2005, Batsheva Dagan has been coming to the Ravensbrück Memorial Site regularly as part of the “Generations Forum” project. Here the young people have the opportunity to get to know survivors like them and to hear their stories firsthand. 

Shoah survivor and author Batsheva Dagan now lives in Israel. To this day, she regularly visits the Ravensbrück Memorial to talk to younger generations. (Picture Alliance / dpa Zentralbild / Ronny Hartmann)

 The employees of the memorial have been thinking for a long time about what the future of remembrance work might look like if one day there are no more survivors.

"We found it difficult to find a replacement for the generation forum, considering that we will soon no longer be able to expect the survivors to come here," says Matthias Heyl.

“That was our consideration, to shape the transition together with them, from what always means the communicated memory, where survivors still tell, to cultural memory, where one tries to keep cultural forms of memory alive. And so last year we dared to experiment to do something new with them and the artists around Dan Wolf. "

The stories of the last survivors as inspiration

Since 2018 it has been the stories of the last survivors who can still visit the Generations Forum, from which the young people from “Sound in the Silence” draw their inspiration. Stories by Judith Varga-Hofmann from Hungary, Selma van de Perre from London, Batsheva Dagan and Emmie Arbel from Israel. Emmie Arbel was born in The Hague in 1937 and deported to Ravensbrück as a child with her mother and her two brothers. She was six when she came here and eight when she and her relatives were brought to Bergen-Belsen, where her mother died of weakness shortly after the liberation in 1945. For a long time she was unable to talk about her experiences in the camp; today she does so with great caution and certainty:

“I was sitting earlier and watching the group dance and I was wondering what you might think when you are dancing ... And later a girl came up to me and told me it was her therapy here. It was after I told my story. She was very impressed and she said that it is very strong for her when she dances. I was happy to hear that. ”

“ I love working at the Ravensbrück Memorial because the doors are always open, ”says Dan Wolf. “I want the youngsters to go deeper into the story. For example with this poem by Batsheva Dagan: 'To those who hesitate to ask'

“In the rap workshop, for example, we worked with the poem and made a song out of it. The young people tell us how important it is for them to have this dialogue between the generations and also a dialogue between the various ways of expressing themselves, ”explains Dan Wolf.

Jens Huckeriede says: “The essence of this work is actually through these artistic forms that every young person, depending on where he stands, can find his own approach to history. And then you can express yourself emotionally and there is not such a gap as in theoretical discussions, where those who know more also say more. ”

Their collaboration only ended with the sudden death of Jens Huckeriede in 2013. Since then, Dan Wolf has taken over the artistic direction and follows in his mentor's footsteps.

Such work would also be necessary in the USA

Dress rehearsal in Ravensbrück. Forty young people were able to work on their performance for five days. Foundations and the public sector provide accommodation, meals and the program. The memorial takes care of the participants. Dan Wolf can only dream of such ideal conditions for his work in the USA: 

“I was wondering how you could do this type of job in the US and I talked to other like-minded people. Everyone said, 'Yes! When one group is suppressing another, you need that kind of work that you do with Sound in the Silence. ' There is probably no place in the world that doesn't need this project. In the US with all the black communities and the Native Americans who are still oppressed by colonialism, there is still this racism. Native American culture is a fetish in my country. Thanksgiving, for example, is not a peaceful meal, but the repetition of a meal that whites celebrated after butchering the indigenous people. We have a community here that is still in the middle of the history of their oppression.

At the end of an intensive working week, around 100 guests are sitting in a large room in the Ravensbrück Memorial on a Saturday morning at the end of August 2019. The pedagogical director Matthias Heyl greets the audience and hands over the microphone to Dan Wolf. The young people form a group from which they come to the front individually to recite their poems, texts and raps. For example Aicha:

"I feel empty, numb, torn inside, the thoughts in my head don't let me go, I don't know what to do with this feeling, it's nice here, it's depressing here, it's sick ..."

Art can open hearts to something greater

Later they move across the area with the audience, they dance and rap to the sounds of the large square in front of the former headquarters. 

Hannah and Rosa took part in the performance: 

“When I came to this camp, I thought it would be like I'm breathless for a few days, and that wasn't the case at all. I think it's also because I wrote a song where I have the story of a survivor that I sing. It enabled me to show my feelings, ”says Hannah.

And Rosa says:

“Dan is a very impressive person. So he's not that missionary. But he's already trying to convince everyone why hip-hop is a good idea to talk about these, yes, stories. He can get across very well and is definitely convinced of it. "

“I always like this picture from the 1920s in Paris, where all the greatest artists are sitting around one table. I always want this energy in my life too, ”emphasizes Dan Wolf.

"It always has to do with human interaction and using your arts to open people's hearts and minds to something bigger in life."