A group of fourteen participants from the Siegerland visited Belorussia from the 19th until the 26th of October, to commemorate the closing of the ghetto of Minsk on the 21st of October of 1943.

The trip was organised by the Association for Christian – Jewish Collaboration Siegerland, by the Association for International Education and Exchange (IBB) based in Dortmund and the International Education and Conference Centre “Johannes Rau” Minsk. The commemoration trip was guided by Manfred Zabel.

A visit in the former ghetto
The Association of the Jewish Communities reminded on the 21st of October with an event in the Jama, the place of execution of the ghetto, of the terrible incidents until the closing in 1943. In the years 1941 until 1943 60 000 Jews from all over Europe were murdered there.

In commemoration of the victims from Cologne, Bonn and the Rhine – Sieg district a memorial stone was inaugurated on the area of the former Jewish ghetto on the 22nd of October.

Two new memorial stones
For the deported citizens of Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Bremen memorial stones in this area are already existent – and in 2009 another memorial stone for Berlin is supposed to follow.

In the evening the group participated in a commemoration ceremony in the concert hall of Minsk, in which on invitation by the IBB Dortmund Federal Minister a.D. Manfred Stolpe as well as the German ambassador in Minsk, Gebhard Weiss, spoke.