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Polish and German students cleaning Jewish cemetery in Wrocław

It was Eckhard Rieke who came up with the idea of tidying the Wrocław necropolis. Eckhard Rieke is a history teacher from Thomas Mann Gymnasium in Berlin, who, in the 1980s, came here to visit the grave of Lassalle with a group of German politicians. Fascinated with the place, Rieke came back with his students. Initially, Germans would clean the cemetery on their own, but for the last 18 years, they have been doing it together with students of Private High School ASSA from Wrocław. – In the beginning, Holocaust was always somewhere in the background even though its victims were not buried here. Nowadays, the young hardly ever talk about the war. They have their own problems – says Jakub Możejko, a teacher of German from ASSA.

Yesterday, 20 young Germans and 11 Poles moved in to dormitory to spend there 7 days together. During the day, they clean the cemetery, visit the Old Town and the Synagogue under White Stork (Synagoga pod Białym Bocianem); in the evening, they have fun in pubs. Next month, students from Wrocław are going to visit the German in Berlin.

Maciej Łagiewski, manager of the City Museum of Wrocław which owes the cemetery, admits that none of the groups of volunteers cleaning the cemetery has endured for such a long time. – 18 years, it’s a sensation – he says. – The German even planted here a red beech in memory of one of the teachers who used to come to the cemetery with them at the beginning but died recently.