Nuremberg to Bydgoszcz
I traveled from Nuremberg to Bydgoszcz to track down a bell that was confiscated by the Nazis and survived the war.
Shortly after World War II broke out, the Nazis calculated the amount of resources that would be required to realize their objectives and figured that metal would soon be in short supply. To that end, a comprehensive plan was drawn up to acquire additional metal by confiscating church bells from all over Germany and the annexed territories. Bells were forcefully removed, transported and temporarily stored in a shipyard (later nicknamed “the bell cemetery”) near the city of Hamburg. There the bells would await their fate. In an attempt to preserve the more significant bells, well-meaning local authorities submitted every single one of them to a systematic process of examination and categorization. They produced an index card for each bell, a sort of preemptive “death certificate” that noted the bell’s origin, date of production, weight, pitch, and ornamental features such as inscriptions. Pencil presses and plaster molds of bell inscriptions were also made. Based on these characteristics, each bell was then given a rating of A, B, C or D, with D being the least significant and to be immediately melted down for metal. The index cards eventually ended up in the archives of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum.
A great number of bells classified as C or above survived the war. The German bells were, in most cases, returned to their respective places of origin. Bells from the annexed territories were not so lucky: a court ruling dictated that the thefts of bells from Poland and other places were “merely acts of war.” By virtue of this ruling, all confiscated bells essentially became German national property. Few people cared at that point. Europe was in ruin and there were more pressing issues to worry about. Bells from annexed territories were sent somewhat indiscriminately to German churches that cared to ask for one. A 2004 article in Die Zeit (http://www.zeit.de/2004/44/OstGlocken) covered the story of a dispute between a Polish parish and a German church over the ownership of one such Nazi-confiscated bell. After much digging and a few phone calls, and with the help of a German friend Matthias and his Polish-speaking friend Joanna, we discovered that the bell had been returned to its rightful owner in 2005, to the tiny village of Slawianowie, which sits on the outskirts of Bydgoszcz in Poland.
On this trip, I first visited the bell archive at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. The index cards were beautifully made, and, to my surprise, the museum also kept a large number bell fragments. Apparently, the bell cemetery was bombed by the allies and some of the important bells were destroyed. Dr. Mathias Nuding, director of the archive, told me that I was the first person to look at these fragments since their transfer to the museum. I carefully photographed, measured and recorded the ring of each fragment. In Nuremberg, I also recorded the clock bell of the Frauenkirche from the market where Hitler was seen addressing his troops in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. I also made several field recordings at the Zeppelinfeld Nazi rally grounds.
I then went to Poland to see the stolen bell in the Church of St. James the Apostle in Slawianowie. The head priest was kind enough to let me ring the bell. The next day, the guide took me to the Bydgoszcz district of Fordon, near the infamous “Valley of Death.” We visited an abandoned synagogue there, where I made some recordings and interviewed a local resident who is fundraising to revive the synagogue. He told me a remarkable story: At one time, a sizable Jewish population resided in the district. The Swedish King John II Casimir Vara ruling Poland at that time established Fordon as a “model community,” where Jews, Catholics and Protestants would live harmoniously alongside each other. This aspiration is still evident in the city’s plan. The majority of the Jews, however, fled before the war; only 28 remained, and they worked together to maintain the synagogue until all had been sent to the concentration camps. Out of these 28 Jews, only one survived the war. This lone survivor came back to the district in the 1950s, in hopes of rejoining her community, only to discover that none of her friends and neighbors had survived – an entire community wiped out. Many believed that she then left the country and never returned. Others, however, believed she adopted a new non-Jewish identity and continues to live in the district to this day.
To listen to the other recordings, visit http://soundcloud.com/samsonyoung/sets/for-whom-the-bell-tolls
