"The satchel is an exhibit on loan to the local history museum," reports Arne Homann, the municipal museum director. "It's not every day that our beautiful and historically significant exhibits travel such long distances."

The handmade satchel was donated to the Salder Castle Municipal Museum by Erich Kleemann from Lesse.

Erich Kleemann's family came from the district of Chelm (eastern Poland). They were resettled by the National Socialists in 1940 as part of the Hitler-Stalin Pact to the "Reichsgau Wartheland" (Poland), which was annexed by the Germans in violation of international law. She fled from there to the west in 1945. Her father died shortly before the end of the war.

Lesse became the new home of the family, consisting of Erich Kleemann, his mother and sister, his grandparents as well as his aunt and uncle and two cousins.

Little Erich started school in the spring of 1947. As a war widow, it was not possible for his mother to buy him a school bag due to the general shortage and the difficult economic situation in the post-war period. So his grandfather sewed him this satchel from a part of a disused conveyor belt from the Barbecke mine. His uncle worked there and had brought the material with him. Erich Kleemann used the satchel until the end of his school days.

Looking back on the donation to the Salder Castle Municipal Museum, he wrote: "I was proud and happy back then!".

The satchel is on display in the Leer Museum of Local History in the traveling exhibition "From You to Us. Refugees and displaced persons in post-war Lower Saxony" from March 25 to July 17.

After its return to the Salder Castle Municipal Museum, the piece with its highly interesting and moving history will be integrated into the permanent exhibition.