2018 70,273 Project
70,273 Project in Rochester Cathedral - by Jackie S
I visited Rochester on Friday 9 March to see the 70,273 Project which was hung in the Cathedral. It was stunning to see so many quilts, these pairs of red crosses representing 13,850 babies, children, men and women killed by lethal injection, gassed, starved or shot under Hitler's Aktion T4 Programme between January 1940 and August 1941. If a person was deemed to be "imperfect" and "unworthy of life" and two doctors put a Red Cross on their medical form, then their fate was sealed. It is a little known period of this part of human history and was only recognised by a memorial in Berlin in 2014.
The Project was started by Jeanne Howell-Chambers in America in 2016. The white fabric represents the sheet of paper and the red crosses the two doctors' evaluation. The crosses are designed not to be a perfect pair to represent the person they are commemorating. The blocks were made by thousands of people across the south east and beyond - community groups, schoolchildren, individuals - and sewn together by many volunteers who gave their time, energy and creativity in an emotional response to a huge undertaking.
In the Cathedral there was a book listing alphabetically the names of every person and group participating showing where an individual block could be located, together with a beautiful book of photographs and stories of those who had made the blocks and sewn together the quilts.
The Rochester exhibition has now finished and displays of quilts were also exhibited in Durham Cathedral and in Jersey; eventually all the quilts will come together - estimated to be over 1,000 - and when the Rochester quilts are taken down the plan is to show them in other countries. More sewing is needed so if you would like to be involved you can visit the 70273 website www.the70273project.org for details.
I found it a very moving experience relating the crosses to individuals who were killed, and these seen here represented only a small number of the unfortunate victims.
