Memorial to the victims of the Sasel satellite camp at Bergstedt Church

The memorial designed by Axel Peters (born 1944), a sculptor from Mecklenburg, was dedicated on 18 November 1990. It comprises two steles made from Elbe sandstone which were placed on either side of a path behind church. One of the steles bears the names and prisoner numbers of 34 women and a 33-day-old infant, all of whom died in the Sasel satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp. They were first buried in the Bergstedt Cemetery, but in March 1957 they were reinterred in the Ohlsdorf Cemetery. The other stele lies broken on the opposite side of the path and features the Jewish adage quoted by Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker in his speech on 8 May 1985: ‘Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer; the secret of redemption lies in remembrance.’

Discussions about a memorial
In 1985, the Walddörfer local administrative committee unanimously voted to create a memorial in the Bergstedt Cemetery to the 35 victims of the Sasel satellite camp. However, the committee met with resistance, and it took five years before the memorial could be installed in its present form in the grounds of the church thanks to the involvement of the board of the Bergstedt parish council and donations from individual residents.

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