” “Also a visit to the Dachau concentration camp is among the twinning initiatives which precede the 20th World Youth Day. Tomorrow 198 young people from the diocese of Pisa will visit the place where many Jews were killed,and they will make the Way of the Cross in a small chapel just outside Dachau in memory of the victims of nazism. Yesterday, some youngsters, always of the diocese of Pisa,and guests in the parishes of Saint Pancras and of Our Beloved Lady(diocese of Augsburg), went to the small town of Birkenhof during the initiatives of the day for social commitment. "It is a welcoming centre for Russians of German origin said Cristina Valtriani, who is in charge of the youth pastoral care in the Tuscan diocese . Around 1850 some Germans went to Russia to develop new settlements but were sent away from there after the Second World War, and sent to Siberia and Kazakhstan. They were readmitted into Germany by the government who recognised their German origins after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Birkenhof was created for them, who no longer remembered their language of origin. They were poor and without work. All had been done also to foster reintegration". The Tuscan youngsters made two laboratories with the inhabitants of Birkenhof; one was for gardening and the other one was for painting on the theme: "Peace is possible".
