Haunted

In the post-war period, children in the Johannaberg home in the Teutoburg Forest experienced homesickness, harassment and violence. Decades later, a group of long-adult victims set off on a journey and return to the now abandoned home for a week. Self-determined and accompanied by the film camera, they process their memories in scenes. The idea for the film was developed in close collaboration over many years with those affected, the Verschickungskinder initiative and a psychologist.

Statement by the filmmaker

The Waldhaus detention centre in Bad Salzdetfurth was only two street corners away from my parents’ house. The building has long since been demolished and there is now a football pitch where I used to kick a ball into the goal as a child. Only the foundation walls and the street sign are reminders of the former labour camp. My home town also hushed up the dark chapter of the deportation of children for decades, even though the residents were demonstrably aware of it. This makes it all the more important for me to remember the Kinderverschickung and those affected by this word. Maybe it’s because I was exposed to bullying violence in my own class for years when I was at school. In any case, the desire to come to terms with systemic and unseen injustice against children has become a main concern of my artwork. This parallel unites my radio play “Die Schlangenbande” about young resistance fighters during the Nazi era, the short film “Schreiendes Schweigen” about a child going through a divorce and the TV programme “Die Geschichte der Edelweißpiraten” for the heute journal on ZDF. Back in 2021, I produced a radio play about the Kinderverschickung. But in the course of my intensive research, I realised that a short radio play would not be enough to represent the many experiences of the deported children. So I came up with the idea of tackling the subject in the form of a documentary film.

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