EN Official Journal of the European Union CE 78/522

(2004/C 78 E/0543)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-3328/03

by Erik Meijer (GUE/NGL) to the Commission

(12 November 2003)

Subject: Wilful neglect, to the point of destruction, of the former prison camp ‘Stammlager Χ Β Sandbostel’, an important memorial to the shared history of Europe

1. Is the Commission aware that during the Second World War more than a million people from 46 countries (including the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Greece, Serbia, Poland, Italy, Russia, Ukraine and the Netherlands) were at one time or another detained as prisoners of war by the Hitler regime in the camp ‘Stammlager X B Sandbostel’ near Bremervörde between the Rivers Weser and Elbe in the German Land of Lower Saxony and that 50 000 of them died there during their imprisonment on account of hunger, disease or mistreatment?

2. Is the Commission also aware that in the late 1940s the same camp was used to imprison camp guards and SS personnel and that from the 1950s it housed refugees from the GDR, but that since 1974 it has formed part of Immenhain business park and has passed into private ownership without any form of protection by the Land, Landkreis or commune?

3. Is the Commission aware that over a period of many years all memory of the camp has been systematically destroyed by neglecting it, so that the buildings are falling down, by making it impossible for survivors or any other visitors to view the camp, by banning TV cameras from the site, by shouting at visitors that they should forget the past, and by opposing the ‘Dokumentations- und Gedenkstätte Sandbostel’ association, which was set up in 1992 and seeks to preserve the camp as a memorial?

4. In view of the common history of the peoples of Europe and their shared suffering under violence and dictatorship, will the Commission, even irrespective of its formal powers and responsibilities, take steps to maximise the scope for preserving this former prison and concentration camp as a memorial and making it accessible as such, and will it, on this basis, contact the authorities responsible for land-use planning, education and monuments in Sandbostel?

Source: TV Nederland 1, Netwerk, 19 October 2003.

Answer given by Mr Prodi on behalf of the Commission

(12 December 2003)

In 1993 the Parliament resolution on European and international protection for Nazi concentration camps as historical monuments (1) called 'on the Member States, the Council and the Commission to give financial and other support to all measures designed to preserve the special significance of the Nazi concentration camps and to place them under European and international protection'.

The 1995 budget accordingly made provision for grants for 'the preservation of the main sites and archives associated with the deportations, symbolised by the memorials which have been raised on the sites of the former camps'. This provision has been renewed every year since, and is line 15.04.01.02 in the preliminary draft budget for 2004.

In May 2003 the Commission proposed on the basis of Article 151 of the EC Treaty a new legal basis for the grant scheme (2) as part of a proposal for a Parliament and Council Decision establishing a Community action programme to promote bodies active at European level in the field of culture.

Projects are selected for these grants on the basis of calls for proposals. No proposal has hitherto been received for a project in connection with the camp or from the organisation to which the Honourable Member refers. The call for 2004 proposals will be published in the Official Journal and on the internet.

As regards the request to contact the responsible authorities, the Commission has no competence to do this as, by virtue of the principle of subsidiarity, the matters cited fall within the exclusive responsibility of the Member State.

(1) OJ C 72, 15.3.1993.

(2) COM(2003) 275 final.