A school class places a "stumbling stone" to commemorate a pupil murdered by the Nazis, and they interview a Holocaust survivor. At 92, Ingeburg Geissler is still bearing witness to the horrors of Nazi terror.
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00:00For these students, this holocaust project has become personal.
00:05That's because a former student of their school
00:08was murdered by the Nazis 82 years ago.
00:11Werner Spandau was persecuted by the Nazi regime
00:15and imprisoned in several concentration camps
00:18because he stood up to fascism.
00:20Now they're learning about his story.
00:23The highlight of the project was installing a stumbling stone
00:27in front of Werner Spandau's former home in Berlin.
00:31At first I didn't realize that I was reading and learning
00:34about a story about people that really happened.
00:37But then I understood, yes, this really happened.
00:40Ingeborg Geisler is a holocaust survivor.
00:43She's looking through pictures as she tells her story.
00:46Her mother had this photo taken of her when she was about 9 years old
00:50to convince the authorities that the way Ingeborg looked
00:53didn't fit the Nazis' racist ideology.
00:57I don't know if my mother explained to me
01:00what she needed the picture for.
01:03I can't say.
01:06But later, of course, I realized it.
01:10And then, I have to admit, I also looked at the photo
01:13to see if there was anything about me that looked Jewish.
01:17I didn't find anything.
01:22Ingeborg's father was Jewish and her mother was Christian.
01:26Her father was able to emigrate to China,
01:29but her mother tried to remain inconspicuous.
01:32Ingeborg Frank, as she was called back then,
01:35stayed with her aunt and uncle in a small town in eastern Germany.
01:40I was the only one in Marbach who had to wear a star.
01:44There was a teacher there named Möbius
01:47who was the local leader of the Nazi party.
01:51And he made it clear to the children
01:54that they could do whatever they wanted with Inge Frank.
01:57I was an outcast.
02:02And children can be very cruel.
02:08In 1941, she was banned from attending school,
02:11something that hurt her deeply.
02:14Somewhere in 1945, she was transported
02:17to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
02:20A local police officer had tricked her
02:23by saying that she would be able to attend school there.
02:28There on the train, when I told others
02:32what the local policeman had told us,
02:37the adults said that it was all a big mistake.
02:44We would be killed.
02:46We are going to our deaths.
02:50Ingeborg wrote a postcard to her aunt and uncle
02:53and threw it out of the train window.
02:55By some miracle, the card was delivered.
02:58Dear aunt, dear uncle, I'm fine.
03:01It's all a lie. I'm not coming back.
03:05But Ingeborg did come back.
03:08Unlike Werner Spandau and six million Jews
03:11who became victims of the Holocaust.
03:14The students want to know how this could have happened.
03:17We delivered their questions to Ingeborg Geisler.
03:21Did you expect it before it all happened
03:24or did you somehow see it coming?
03:27There were many intellectuals, highly educated people,
03:31scholars and so on who stayed in Germany
03:34because they thought, well, it couldn't get that bad.
03:39It got worse.
03:42What was it like after the war,
03:45when things started to get back to normal
03:48and people went back to school?
03:50How were Jewish people treated then?
03:54As someone persecuted by the Nazi regime,
03:58I was very well looked after in the former East Germany.
04:03But officially, there wasn't any interest in what happened.
04:07I've spoken to relatives from West Germany
04:10who went to school after the Second World War
04:13and they said these things weren't part of their history classes either.
04:23She's been talking to young people about the Nazi era
04:27and her childhood for over 30 years,
04:30to keep history from repeating itself.
04:33The students are worried about Germany's political climate,
04:36its parallels to the past and the shift to the right.
04:42You get a bit scared when you watch the news.
04:46And also TikTok.
04:49There are always things where foreigners are being targeted by hate
04:53and I think that's kind of stupid.
05:00That's why the students want to continue telling the story of Werner Spandau.
05:05They want to ensure no one forgets Germany's reign of terror under the Nazi regime.