Remembrance march 2024

Research work continues with new findings

Search for photos from private collections

Descendant from Australia

Eva Nagler’s book will be published in German

Memorial March 2024

The memorial on Palmnicken beach (today Jantarny, Russian federation), where the Jewish community of Kaliningrad commemorates the death march and the massacre in the final phase of the Second World War, has been in existence since 2011. Among the victims were many Polish Jewish women from the Lodz ghetto. They were rounded up from several labor camps in East Prussia in Königsberg and then led on a day and night march through the cold to the town of Palmnicken on the Baltic Sea in the last days of January 1945, during which thousands of weakened prisoners who had fallen behind were shot by the guards.

This year, the memorial march took place on Sunday, January 28. For the first time, a representative of the association Juden in Ostpreussen e. V. gave a short speech at the official commemoration ceremony, which was moderated by one of the Kaliningrad rabbis. The association had created the exhibition on the history of the Jews in Königsberg in the museum in the Kaliningrad synagogue, which has been open for over a year. The modules on the specific history of the extermination of the Jews in East Prussia were visited by many school classes in the region, especially during the Holocaust Remembrance Week.

Research work with new findings

Research into the events surrounding the massacre is constantly leading to new insights. The prisoner detention hall on the amber mining site and the exact route to the extermination site on the beach have now been located. In addition, information has been received about the location of the later murder of the more than 200 survivors who were picked up in the days following the massacre. The research project was presented to experts at the international conference at the Polin Museum Warsaw “European Jews Facing the Imminence of the Holocaust” on April 25, 2023 by Ms. Claudia Vollmer (University of Hagen) and will probably lead to a publication in about 2 years

Route to the beach along the stream between Palmnicken and Kraxtepellen – Excerpt from graphic novel in the museum

Search for photos

Until recently, pictures from the war period have been found in Germany and made available to local museums. Our association hopes that there are still personal and previously unknown memories from East Prussia from this period in private collections that could make an important contribution to historical research. Contact: Juden in Ostpreussen e.V., Friedrichstr. 95, Postbox 48, 10117 Berlin, Germany, info@jewsineastprussia.de

Descendant from Australia

Mr. Yoav Lester, the great-nephew of a victim and survivor (Eva Nagler, see below) traveled to visit the site and address the several hundred people present. As Generation 3, he had processed the impressions from his family together with his sister in an animated video, which was shown at film festivals. ” Noch Am Leben (Still Alive)” by Anita Lester, 2017

Translation into German: The book by survivor Eva Nagler

Eva Nagler’s English book “Massacre on the Baltic” from 1995 is out of print and is now being translated into German. This is being done by the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and it is to be presented in Berlin in January 2025 to mark the 80th anniversary of the massacre.

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