For years, many Fürstenwalde residents have been commemo­rating the events around the November pogroms of 1938 – and the victims – with a prayer service and remembrance walk through the town. On 9 November 2020, two Jewish families – repre­senta­tive of all those who lost their lives to National Socialist terror or who had to abandon their old lives – stood at the centre of the event held at St Mary’s Cathedral.

Werner Hirsch and Eugen Brandt were both deported on 9 November 1938 to the Oranienburg concentration camp, where they were maltreated and humiliated. While Werner Hirsch and his wife Hilde eventually managed to escape to England, and their daughter Gerda to Brazil, Eugen Brandt ended up being murdered in Auschwitz. Telling the story of their lives is an attempt to give them back their dignity and to do them justice. Today, descendants of the Hirsch and Brandt families live in Brazil and England. They bear witness to the escape and to the determina­tion to survive.

The event was musically accompanied by students of Fürsten­walde’s music school. The sound and event technicians of Ghostnote from Fürstenwalde took charge of the livestream and recording.