#StandWithUkraine
Berlin-Wannsee, February 28, 2022
The Memorial and Educational Site Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz condemns Putin's war of aggression on Ukraine. We are terrified by the violence, death and suffering of the people there. We reject Putin's use of Nazi history to justify the attack as historically wrong and completely inappropriate.
Our thoughts are with the people in Ukraine, especially with survivors of the Shoah and Nazi forced labor, who have visited our house frequently in recent years.
We are in solidarity with our Ukrainian partners, with whom we have been doing continuous educational work in recent years, among them the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies (Український центр вивчення історії Голокосту) and The Jewish Forum of Ukraine (Єврейський форум України). Students, teachers, memorial workers and journalists from Ukraine come to our house every year, encountering them is a constant enrichment for our work.
Ukrainian exchange students, participants in international youth encounters (e.g. work camps of the memorial sites, the German War Graves Commission, etc.), political and diplomatic delegations that come to our house, but above all our Ukrainian volunteers who worked with us for a year through Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste (Aktion Reconciliation Services for Peace), are part of a vibrant exchange.
It is also the critical discourse on history that is part of an open, democratic, free civil society. We engaged in this discourse on the relevance of history in the present with our partners in Ukraine, but also in Belarus and Russia. The war will interrupt this work, perhaps change it permanently. We want to maintain and develop our contacts in the future.
Solidarity Opening on Women's Day, March 8: We were collecting for our Ukrainian partners
On March 8, 2022, Berlin celebrated International Women's Day as a public holiday - we opened our house in solidarity with our Ukrainian partners to collect for them and support them with money:
· The Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies (Український центр вивчення історії Голокосту) and
· The Jewish Forum of Ukraine (Єврейський форум України)
The English Audio Guide were for free - and our 400 guests donated generously at the donation box in our house. We collected 2,000 Euro.
Our neighbour, Villa Liebermann, supported the solidarity day with an own donation box - thank you!