Looking Back on a 20-Year Partnership Between Volkswagen and the International Youth Meeting Centre in Auschwitz

The “International Youth Meeting Centre Oświęcim/Auschwitz” (IYMC) was set up two decades ago, and the close ties between Volkswagen AG and the IYMC have existed for just as long. A ceremonial function today looked back on the path this project has taken from the initial ideas developed in the 1970s all the way to realisation of the Centre’s construction in 1986, paying tribute to the present-day significance of the IYMC for the German-Polish culture of remembrance. The guest of honour, Germany’s former federal minister of justice Dr. Hans-Jochen Vogel, praises the long-term commitment by Volkswagen trainees to maintain this concentration-camp memorial.

Following a joint wreath-laying ceremony at the Auschwitz Memorial, Ralph Linde, spokesman for the management of Volkswagen Coaching GmbH, explained to those attending the event what Volkswagen’s objectives are. "The measures involved are designed to promote youth encounters with other people, to promote understanding and tolerance among youths and to heighten their sense of personal responsibility." Linde added that the maintenance work on the grounds of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and encounters with Auschwitz survivors greatly help people to identify common history at the site. At the same time, the obvious utility of the work performed there has the effect of turning the concept of responsibility into a personal focus of action. Since the International Youth Meeting Centre Auschwitz was first set up, 1,000 Volkswagen trainees have actively participated in the activities revolving around the memorial, thus "creating a foundation of new-generation remembrance and personally felt responsibility".

In his capacity as the employee representative, Gerardo Scarpino, a member of the Volkswagen general works council and chairman of the council’s committee on education, reminded the audience that, 20 years ago, the then head of the works council, Walter Hiller, still had to do a lot of persuading to gain support for the project within the company. "These days," says Scarpino, "the International Youth Meeting Centre in Auschwitz is an undisputed part of the wider corporate course of raising awareness for the theme of responsibility." The employee representative body views the considerable interest demonstrated by the young adults within the company as affirmation of its position: "For us, remembering the past and shaping the future are two sides of the same coin."

Among the Volkswagen representatives in attendance were thirteen apprentices from Wolfsburg, Hanover, Kassel, Emden, Salzgitter, Zwickau and Chemnitz. These budding young mechatronics specialists, design mechanics or electronics specialists for automation technology have taken part in project measures along with 90 other apprentices this year alone. When Sebastian Werner (20) from Chemnitz looks back on the two weeks he spent at the Centre and doing maintenance work on the grounds of this former execution camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, it is the "people and their faces" that come to mind first. Tomke Schönfeld (19) from Emden emphasised the importance of having met Auschwitz survivors. "These witnesses of history," he said, "told us what they experienced here. It was very moving." Melanie Raschke (17) from Salzgitter explained how having walked around the entire compound and having walked on the rail tracks that brought the deportation trains has left a deep impression on her. Everyone taking part in the event agreed that reflecting on history at the very site of it forges a more profound knowledge of the Nazi annihilation strategy and of what the tasks today must be. "History needs to be passed on," says Alexander Goes (20) from Wolfsburg. Sandra Morabito (18), an aspiring design mechanic, expressly encourages people to take part in the scheme, saying, "It was an experience that each of us can assimilate into our own everyday lives."

To ensure that the International Youth Meeting Centre can better accommodate its growing mobility requirements, Volkswagen has once more provided two VW vans. Ralph Linde, Gerardo Scarpino and Hans-Herbert Jagla, the head of brand HR in Wolfsburg, handed over the keys to these two vehicles (both manufactured in Poznań) to the director of the Centre, Dr Leszek Szuster.

The work done at the International Youth Meeting Centre is an integral part of Volkswagen’s corporate culture of remembrance. This culture began with research in the mid-80s and an ensuing initiative by trainees at the company’s Wolfsburg site which led to the founding of a publicly accessible "Place of Remembrance of Forced Labor in the Volkswagen Factory". The company also published a series of writings comprising accounts by former forced labourers, the most recent of which was a book entitled "Olga and Piet. A love under two dictatorships".