A group of young VW trainees and young Polish college students have written a letter of solidarity to support the protests against the ostracization and expulsion of the priest Olivier Ndjimbi-Tshiende in the Bavarian town of Zorneding. The young people were motivated to protest and act especially by the threatening messages saying: “We will send you to Auschwitz”.

Letter of solidarity




Dear friends who are standing united together this evening in Zorneding.



We are writing to you from the Polish city of Oswiecim, known everywhere on the world map as Auschwitz. We – a group of trainees from Volkswagen in Emden, Osnabrück and Wolfsburg, and a group of vocational college students from the Polish city of Bielsko-Biala. 



We have been working together for four days with the International Auschwitz Committee at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial where we are helping to preserve this place of horror as a warning and a centre of remembrance for the future of humanity. Especially here in Auschwitz, the news we have received on the Internet over the past few days about what is happening to your priest has triggered our awareness. We were particularly shocked and immediately outraged by the threat “We will send you to Auschwitz” that has been hurled at Father Olivier in numerous hate mails.



We have now gained an idea – through our encounters with this place, through talks with survivors and through our work here – what it means: being a prisoner in Auschwitz. Humiliation, torture, suffering, mass murder and ashes. 



And you know this as well! Threatening to send people here – it’s so toxic, so horrific, so shoddy, so sickeningly stuck in the past. But in our day and age it is no longer possible to pronounce such obscene threats without being contradicted loud and clear by many, many people. And this is why we are all standing together this evening.



We too will be standing together and holding our candles at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, joining you in your protest and your hope that never again will human beings banish other people to Auschwitz, that never again will Germany be dominated by anti-Semitism and racism. 



We have seen a photo of Father Olivier on the Internet, his lovely, open smile: We hope that he will be smiling this evening, when he hears from us all, and we hope that he can feel at home again in Germany. All the very best!