Anna Tuerr Memorial
Official Dedication of the Monument in
Mannheim (Ontario) June 26, 2005
Speech delivered on Behalf of the German Canadian Congress (Ontario) on the
Occasion of the Official Dedication of the Monument in Anna Tuerr Memorial
Park, in Mannheim (Ontario) June 26, 2005
by
Dr. Ulrich Frisse, LL.M.
President-Elect of the German Canadian Congress (Ontario)
Dear Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends and members of the German-Canadian community. I would like to take the opportunity to welcome you all to the official dedication of this very special monument on behalf of the German-Canadian Congress of Ontario.
We have come together today to commemorate the fate of millions of ethnic Germans who were expelled from their homelands, deported, starved and often brutally murdered during the last stages of World War II and the immediate post war years. When World War II came to an end sixty years ago in May of 1945, a total of 50 million people had been uprooted from their former homelands. 14 Million of them were ethnic Germans.
They were forced to leave their homes and German-speaking communities in Yugoslavia, Hungary, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, the Baltics, Poland and the Soviet Union. An estimated two million of them perished while literally walking across Europe in search of a safe heaven and in Stalin’s and Tito’s brutal concentration camps. In the cold technical language of the Potsdam Agreement between the Western Allies and Stalin this human tragedy was referred to as “the orderly transfer of German populations.”
Those affected the most were civilians – women, children, the elderly – innocent victims of totalitarian aggression whose only crime was that they had been brought up in the proud traditions of the Danube Swabians, Transylvania Saxons, or the Sudetengermans, to name only a few.
Many of you who came here shortly after the war from those areas I mentioned, still hold vivid memories of the Vertreibung. From talking to many older members of our ethnic community, I know only too well that many of you brought with you to Canada experiences, which are hard to fathom for us, the members of the younger generation. Death of family members in Tito’s and Stalin’s camps, starvation, torture, rape and slave labour have severely impacted your personal life and – through your memories - continue to impact the life of your children and grandchildren and our ethnic community at large.
Most of you came to Canada with nothing but gratitude for having survived ethnic cleansing, expulsion and terror. Kitchener Waterloo was a somewhat natural destination, given the long standing German presence in our area. Founded by Pennsylvania-Germans, Waterloo Region has attracted German immigrants from Europe since the early 1800s. You came to Canada shortly after the war to build a better life for your families, your children and grandchildren. In the process you also built a strong and thriving community and made many great contributions to Kitchener-Waterloo and to our adopted home country. The story of your life is after all a great success story. But even more important, it is a powerful reminder of the human ability to forgive and to overcome past experiences of the worst kind in order to create a better presence and future.
We are sharing an important historical moment today. The monument we are about to dedicate is the first monument in North America to commemorate the suffering of the ethnic German community. At the very same time, it is also the first monument to celebrate those millions of people uprooted by war and terror for their ability to forgive, to move on with their lives and to build a better world for all of us to live in.
Anna Tuerr in whose memory this park has been erected, was one of those thousands of young ethnic Germans who were deported to Russia to serve as slave labourers in Stalin’s camps. She was seventeen when she was shipped off to the Ukraine in a locked cattle car on New Years Eve 1944. Nothing reflects the deep meaning of this monument better than her very own words:
“We should never forget our dead, but for the sake of our children, we must be willing to forgive and to get on with our lives and help to build a new world, a world with peace, a world without hate.”
“The mother of the Universe protects Children all over the world”. This powerful message is more than just the theme of this monument. It is the legacy of all Vertriebene to the younger and future generations. This park with its beautiful monument will offer them a great opportunity to learn about their history and to commemorate and reflect their own ethnic heritage. May it help us in creating a world in which expulsion, humiliation, torture, war and exploitation no longer exist.