Ahlem Memorial

Everything ran smoothly until 1933

An advertising poster from 1933 shows the Ahlem Israeli Horticultural School near Hanover-Limmer offering trees and plants of all kinds. It was well-known and popular in Hanover. It was founded by the Jewish banker Moritz Simon in 1893. Jewish youths were trained in horticulture. A primary school for girls and boys was attached. The training centre was so exemplary that it enjoyed an international reputation. 685 pupils attended the school. Then came the Nazis.

Suddenly a centre for deportation

The school immediately helped young Jews to emigrate. By 1939, 248 of them had been placed in 18 countries, most of them in Palestine. It was high time, because in autumn 1941 the Nazis turned the horticultural school into a collection point for deporting Jews from here.

By 1944, more than 2,000 Jews from all over southern Lower Saxony were transported from here to the concentration camps in seven transports via the Fischerhof railway station in Linden. Ahlem was suddenly the starting point for transports to extermination, whereas a few years earlier it had been a centre of Jewish garden life. Instead of education and green growth, now annihilation. The director's house was used by the Hanover Gestapo as a branch office to supervise forced labourers. In 1944, the horticultural school was even used as a police detention centre and the former arboretum was misused for executions.

A house full of memories

Today, all of this is extensively documented and can be read there. The Ahlem Memorial was reopened in 2014. Downstairs there is space for readings and discussions with contemporary witnesses. The first floor traces the persecution and marginalisation during the Nazi era.
German-Jewish life is recounted on the first floor. The banker Moritz Simon is portrayed. Seminar rooms under the roof complete the programme. The gardens are also a reminder, the trees silent witnesses. A path leads to the "Wall of Names" with more than 3000 plaques. Here you can read the life dates of people for whom Ahlem meant death.

A celebration with friendships

A Denk.Mal.Garten.Fest is held in the summer to look ahead. Bands from Germany, Israel, Turkey and Switzerland play music. A memorial with a garden party - there is no better way to remember together and tackle the future together. But above all to prevent similar things from happening again.

© Lars Gerhardts