The Train to Freedom – a Czech-Swiss-German research and public history project

M.A. Helen Kaufmann (Pädagogische Hochschule St. Gallen)

Abstrakt

In 1945, several attempts of aid-giving organisations to rescue Jews from national-socialist extermination were successful. Some of these “trains to freedom” passed Switzerland, e.g. a transport with 1200 mostly German (and Austrian), Dutch and Czech Jews coming from Terezin concentration camp to St. Gallen on February 7, 1945. The life stories of these freed prisoners as well as the circumstances of their liberation represent the subject of a transnational research and public history project conducted by the University of Teacher Education St. Gallen, Switzerland (PHSG), the Charles University Prague (CUNI) and the Free University of Berlin (FU Berlin) in cooperation with the Mamlock Foundation. The project goals are to gain insight into the routes of the displaced persons from their deportation to Terezin concentration camp and their journey to St. Gallen to further destinations such as Palestine/Israel, the U.S. or Australia as well as their return to their home countries. A website should present findings of these case studies in Czech and German as well as pedagogical material for schools which takes into account each country’s curriculum and characteristics. Also, the project team wants to set up permanent or travelling exhibitions at all three historical sites and reflect memory cultures in a transnational manner. The transnational project team consists of professors, researchers and students of the three institutions who started the pilot study in late autumn 2021. At the Congress of Czech Historians, I would like to present first findings of our research as well as the project stage.