Das
Landjugendheim
A place
of remembrance!
The
country youth home in Falkensee-Finkenkrug from 1922 - 1950
Here
lived and worked Anna von Gierke, Alice Bendix and Isa Gruner. During National
Socialism, they offered Jewish citizens protection against persecution and
discrimination
Anna von
Gierke (1874-1943) and the rural youth home in Finkenkrug
A wild
property on the Havellander way, on it a struck by lightning garden house, so
began 1922 the rural youth home GmbH of the Anna von Gierke. The
social worker and founder of several social education and children's
institutions in Berlin could look back on thirty years of professional
experience in the field of social work with children.
Together
with Isa Gruner and Alice Bendix, she had set up the Landjugendheim on a
15-hectare site in Falkenhagen. It was also a home for children seeking
recreation and education. The
founding of a GmbH offered opportunities for financial independence. The
Landjugendheim tried free of state tutelage, i.a. with poultry farming and
gardening, both politically and economically independent.
In 1933,
the National Socialists relieved Anna von Gierke because of her Jewish
ancestry. All Jewish employees were dismissed. Anna von Gierke retired from the
management of the GmbH, but continued to work with. Isa
Gruner now ran the business of Landjugendheim GmbH in the spirit of Anna von
Gierkes. So it remained an oasis for children. In the
years since 1933, 15 well-known, parentless Jewish children were hidden here
and their departure was mainly organized in England. Between
1945 and 1950 Isa Gruner designed the reconstruction of the socio-educational
work in the rural youth center Finkenkrug. The children were taken prisoners
whose parents died in the war and in the concentration camps. In 1950, under
the pressure of political changes, they moved to West Berlin with their last
permanent home children. A short
time later, a children's home of the community Falkensee was established in the
rooms of the rural youth home, which existed there until 1981. The last of the
now very dilapidated original buildings of Landjugendheim GmbH were demolished
in the 1990s.
In 1942
she told a group of students in Finkenkrug: »Help us
to regain the right to justice. Help everyone to see their dignity in the other
person and to believe in the good in people. « Foto: Privatbesitz Her
purpose was to care for the children and adolescents entrusted to her: "As
long as there are still Jewish children in Germany whom I can help with, I stay
with them." Foto: Leo Baeck Institut Her
purpose was to care for the children and adolescents entrusted to her: "As
long as there are still Jewish children in Germany whom I can help with, I stay
with them." Foto: Privatbesitz, B. Finney v.l.n.r. Anna von
Gierke b. March 14, 1874 in Wroclaw, died April 3, 1943 in Berlin Alice
Bendix b. November 13, 1894 in Landsberg / Warthe, deported on March 13, 1943
to Auschwitz and murdered there Isa
Gruner born. November 14, 1897 in Wilhelmshaven, died August 20, 1989 in Berlin
On the
initiative of the working group "Landjugendheim Finkenkrug", friends
and sponsors of Museum and Gallery Falkensee eV, and with the kind support of
the Anna von Gierke Foundation Hamburg, the companies Rausch Roads and Civil
Engineering GmbH, Advertising Reichelt and Steinmetz Vogel became on 24 June
2011 in the presence of several former residents of the Landjugendheim a
memorial stone in honor of Anna von Gierke, Alice Bendix and Isa Gruner
revealed.
