Looking back. Looking ahead. 2020-2025

INSTITUTIONS | SPEECHES   197 working conditions were at times even worse than in the main concentration camps. Many of the prisoners – predominantly Jews – died as a result of the catastrophic conditions or were murdered outright by the guards. The Mühldorf subcamp complex was one of the most brutal chapters of Nazi terror. More than 8,000 prisoners were forced to build underground armaments facilities under inhumane conditions – one last desperate attempt by the Nazi regime to prolong its doomed war effort. On 25 April 1945 – when the war was effectively lost for the National Socialists and U.S. troops were closing in on Munich – the SS began clearing the Mühldorf subcamp complex. Around 3,640 prisoners, emaciated from forced labour, starvation and abuse, were crammed into freight cars and sent southward – on a journey with no destination, no mercy, no humanity. Survivors would later give these transports a fitting name: “death trains”. As these trains bore no markings identifying them as prison- er transports, Allied fighter pilots mistook them for regular Wehrmacht supply trains – and attacked them. Many prisoners died during this senseless journey, not least from starvation and exhaustion. On 27 April 1945, this death train passed through Poing.   This very place bore witness to one of the last massacres   committed on German soil. An air-raid warning forced the train to stop. Under pressure from the prisoners, SS guards opened the freight car doors.   For a fleeting moment, there was hope – one that may   have looked, smelled, even felt like freedom. Some prisoners escaped. Some guards deserted. But that hope was crushed by the cruel hands of reality.   A horde of SS men, Luftwaffe soldiers and civilians soon   drove the weakened prisoners back into the train. And they did so with brutal violence. At least 50 concentration camp prisoners were shot dead that day, and more than 200 others were wounded. And all of this happened just two days before liberation by   U.S. troops. Thus, the death train that passed through Poing links the hor- rors of Mühldorf with the atrocities committed in the regime’s final days. In this connection lies a bitter truth: The violence did not end as the perpetrators retreated – it often culminated in final acts of annihilation. Ladies and Gentlemen, More than 80 years after the end of the war, almost no physi- cal traces remain of the subcamps or the death march routes. It is therefore local initiatives, like the one here in Poing, that bring forgotten victims and suppressed crimes back into public consciousness. These projects not only connect communities to their local   history – they also provide a tangible reference point to foster an understanding of the sheer magnitude and systematic nature of the concentration camp system. Today’s unveiling of two new memorial plaques is therefore not just a mere addition. No! It is a fundamental element of our remembrance culture. Through projects like this, people   gain immediate insight into the regional dimensions of National Socialist history. Events that might otherwise feel distant, linked only to places like Auschwitz or Dachau, are rendered vivid and real. More than 8,000 people were imprisoned in Mühldorf in the   final year of the war. One of them was Leslie Schwartz.When he was liberated in Tutzing on 30 April 1945, he was just 15 years old. Until his death in 2020, he regularly visited schools across Germany – including here in Poing – to share his expe- riences in Hungary and his deportation to Auschwitz. He told the children:“I must bear witness as long as I can. For young people, but also for myself”. Without contemporary witnesses like Leslie Schwartz, our remembrance culture will inevitably change. It is our responsibility to ensure that places like this do not fall silent – that they bear witness to the suffering of the victims and the crimes of National Socialism. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation to everyone involved – especially the pupils of the Franz Marc Gymnasium and their teacher, whose initia- tive made this collaborative project with the municipality of