January 2009
At the end of Volkswagen’s one-week Youth Encounter program, apprentices remembered Holocaust victims in the fourth International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the German Bundestag at the invitation of the International Auschwitz Committee (IAC).
Together with young people from all over Europe they devoted their attention to the victims of National Socialism and World War II.
Vanessa Semke from Wolfsburg, Jasmina Mitkovic from Salzgitter, Sarah Narjes from Hannover, Andreas Basukow from Kassel, Verena Meyer and Sebastian Zabrocki from Emden visited the former concentration camp in Auschwitz under the Auschwitz remembrance program organized by Volkswagen.
A total of 75 Volkswagen apprentices from Germany visited the Auschwitz Memorial site last year. They were represented in Berlin by the six apprentices.
The Saxon State Parliament also commemorated the International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 with a memorial ceremony.
The commemorative address in the Saxon State Parliament was given by Christoph Heubner, Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee.
Following the ceremony, Saxony’s Minister President Stanislaw Tillich and the President of the Saxon State Parliament Erich Iltgen opened an exhibition of photographs entitled "Den Bildern Namen geben" which presents images of the former concentration camp taken by Jerzy Cirka, an employee at Volkswagen Polkowice, in September 2008.
The exhibition was planned in cooperation with the IAC.
The photographs are supplemented by the thoughts and feelings of young people who, like Cirka, were involved in work at the Auschwitz Memorial: these are Volkswagen apprentices from Wolfsburg, Zwickau and Chemnitz as well as employees from Volkswagen Polkowice and vocational college students from Chocianów.
Five times each year, apprentices from Volkswagen travel to the International Youth Meeting Centre in Auschwitz for two weeks where they live and work with young Poles, helping with jobs such as maintenance work at the Auschwitz Memorial site and meeting with holocaust survivors.
Over 1,100 young people from Volkswagen have attended such programs in Poland over the last 22 years.
Cooperation between the International Youth Meeting Centre in Auschwitz, the International Auschwitz Committee, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft is supported by both the Volkswagen management and labor representatives.
The Youth Encounters are firmly anchored in the corporate culture of remembrance. The apprentices also helped to set up the "Place of Remembrance of Forced Labor in the Volkswagen Factory" which is open to the public at the plant in Wolfsburg.
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