Events

23 March 2023 | 7 pm

The goal of the Nazi persecution apparatus was to keep contacts between the German population and "alien" forced labourers to a minimum.

Social contacts, especially sexual relations, were punished draconically even on mere suspicion. For Poles, the National Socialists developed a special procedure in individual cases: the "Germanisation procedure" based on racist criteria. The special SS camp Hinzert played a central role in this.

The 2023 anthology edited by Insa Eschebach, Christine Glauning and Silke Schneider "Verbotener Umgang mit 'Fremdvölkischen'. Criminalisation and
Criminalisation and the Practice of Persecution under National Socialism" brings together the latest research findings on the subject - including on the Hinzert special SS camp. The event will shed light on the persecution practice of "forbidden contact". The focus of the content is on the " Germanisation procedure" in the SS special camp Hinzert.


Welcome:

Dr. Christine Glauning
Director Nazi Forced Labour Documentation Centre

Moderation:

Dr. Sabine Arend
Director of the Hinzert SS Special Camp Memorial, Rhineland-Palatinate State Agency for Civic Education

Panel:

Dr. Beate Welter
former director of the memorial SS-Sonderlager/KZ Hinzert

Dr. Lena Haase
Research assistant at the University of Trier

Dr. Silke Schneider
Substitute professor of political science at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences

Dr. Insa Eschebach
Visiting researcher at the Institute for Religious Studies at the FU Berlin, former director of the Ravensbrück Memorial Site


A stream and a recording of the event are in preparation.

25 March 2023 | 3 pm

Heribert Bücking shows copperplate collages in the exhibition "The Forced Labour of Zofia and Rolland".

In conversation, Heribert Bücking will talk about the exploration of the topic of forced labour and the search for the appropriate pictorial form. The project was triggered by documents on the forced labour of Zofia Pytkowska and Rolland Mazaud, which their son Philippe had made available to him.

The following questions were at the forefront: "In view of the barbarity of Nazi forced labour as shown in the Documentation Centre ... Does the visual arts have anything to report at all? Or is it perhaps works of art that can inspire a new view of the monstrous scenarios? ... Is there a bridge between such documents and the attempt to find a pictorial interpretation, a symbolic expression for what happened?"

The life-affirming message of Zofia and Rolland, who met and fell in love during forced labour in Berlin, has accompanied the artist in his work. It is a special form of commemorating Nazi injustice.

Heribert Bücking, born in 1940, works in Berlin and is one of the few in Germany who still master engraving. His works have been shown in numerous solo exhibitions to date.

20 April 2023 | 7 pm

The 20th century is rightly called the century of camps. Two concentration camps, three large prisoner-of-war camps, several hundred subcamps and even more "civilian" forced labour camps and other camps were located in the area surrounding the former capital of the Reich, Berlin, now the state of Brandenburg. For over 25 years, the task of archaeology has been to track down these often forgotten places, to research their material remains, to preserve them as monuments and places of (spiritual) memory, and at the same time to enable new access to them. Access to the people imprisoned there is made possible by the countless finds: they speak for the now dying generation of contemporary witnesses. They testify to both individual fates and mass crimes in the 20th century: against any attempt at relativisation and denial. The research of the recent past by means of archaeology is exemplarily demonstrated here for the first time for a German federal state. (From the book description)

Book presentation: Dr. Thomas Kersting
Head of the Department for the Preservation of Archaeological Monuments at the Brandenburg State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and the State Archaeological Museum

Commentary: Dr. Juliane Haubold-Stolle
Berlin Wall Foundation, curator of the exhibition "Exclusion.Archaeology of the Nazi Internment Camps".

Moderation: Kathrin Misterek
Archaeologist