For several years I was involved in collecting, sorting, assembling, quilting for the 70,273 project (a post on my German blog can be found here),
The aim of the project is to commemorate every singe victim of the T4 Nazi-extinction programm of handicapped people which lasted from 1940 to 1942 and officially counted 70,273 victims. (The program was officially stopped after a degree of resistance of citizens but continued undercover, the final count of victims is not known.) Jeanne Hewell-Chambers initiated The 70,273 project after watching a documentary on World War II on TV in 2016, when she realized that her beloved sister-in-law who had suffered a terrible accident at age 3 which left her handicapped most likely would have been a victim, and brought to death, too.
Our activities went publich with an exhibition of the German contributions at the Patchworktage of the Patchwork Gilde Deutschland in Celle in 2018, and in Munich. And an event in Dachau about the seven quilts made by arttextil Dachau as well, as written about on my German blog.
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| Jeanne Hewell-Chambers, her husband "The Engineer", and I one evening in Celle. |
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| A view into the exhibition in Celle |
Then Covid hit, everything stalled, I sent my materials and data sheets and quilts to the US, asking once in a while how far the project had progressed toward the ultimate goal of a joint exhibition of all the finished quilts. Things were taking time, a LOT of work needed to be done!
Earlier this year I was approached by the board of arttextil Dachau whether I would like to give a presentation about the project for their anniversary celebrations. I contacted Peggy and Jeanne about newest developments, and it turned out that Peggy was taking over being the chair of the board from Jeanne due to a number of reasons. As an introduction to her new role it happened that Peggy and her husband decided to come for the event in Dachau, bring the quilts, Peggy would deliver the presentation and I would be translating. All of this took place this past Friday.
Peggy and her husband had done a few days of traveling prior to coming to Dachau, and they were met and hosted by members of Arttextil e.V. . I joined them for a (very cold!) tour of the inner city of Dachau on Friday morning, followed by a Bavarian-style lunch in a typical restaurant, and then we proceede to the lecture hall where we had to hang the quilts.
Peggy had brought ten quilts with her, all seven that had been made by members of Arttextil to commemorate the 207 inmates of Franziskuswerk Schönbrunn who fell victim to T4, and three others.
One of the three additional quilts was Quilt #521, assembled from blocks that had been contributed by quilters from Israel. (This quilt is one who always moves me to the bone, even though the T4 program is not equivalent to the extinction of Jews. I am very grateful to the members of the Israeli guild that they participated in the project, and that they did this through connections to the German guild.)
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| Quilt #521 |
We were also joined by Renate Pognée, a member of the German Patchwork Gilde and a longarm quilter. She had quilted several of the quilts for the Dachau group and was very moved to re-encounter them on this occasion.
The ultimate aim of presenting all the by now more than 620 quilts in a huge exhibition is still on the agenda - that will be the TGGG, The Great Global Gathering. The website is being revamped, a new facebook and instagram appearance is in the making and things are moving forward again after Covid had been a bit of a grand slow-down.
It would be wonderful to be able to travel for that occasion - I hope political circumstances will make it possible when the time comes.
