remembering
With rifles in their backs, 800 Jewish girls and women are driven through Geislingen every day.Wounded Head Memorial
At the cemetery Heiligenaecker, far outside the city of Geislingen, the memorial “Wounded Head” was inaugurated on Memorial Day 1984:
“they dwindle, they fall, the suffering people – remember the women of the kz-satellite camp geislingen 28 july 1944 – 10 april 1945 – and all victims of violence – arbitrariness and madness took away their dignity and life“.
Whoever closes his eyes to the past becomes blind to the present.
Richard von Weizsäcker
After the demand for a memorial in Geislingen was raised in 1983, a compromise was reached after heated discussions and controversies both in the town council and among the population: instead of a simple memorial plaque in the town park opposite WMF, there was to be a large memorial at Heiligenäcker cemetery outside the town. Heinz Knoedler from Ellwangen designed the “Geschundener Kopf“ (wounded head), a memorial primarily dedicated to the women of the concentration camp, but also commemorating all other victims of Nazi tyranny.
Initially at irregular intervals, but since 2012 annually, the concentration camp history of Geislingen is commemorated in a small public ceremony and a wreath is laid in honor of the victims on Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27.
