Memorial stone in Göttingen: Memory of forced laborers of the Nazi era

Memorial stone in Göttingen: Memory of forced laborers of the Nazi era

In a significant step for memory work, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, Weimer, announced the support for 13 local projects today. Under the joint project "Memorails: Halt! Here is reminded of Nazi story", the focus is also on the Deutz Cologne train station. The aim of this program is to keep the memory of forced labor alive during the Nazi era and to draw attention to the individual fates of the victims of the time. As reported [Deutschlandfunk] (https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/foerderung-fuer-History project-an-bahnhoefen-100.html), a total of one million euros from the Federal Government and 100,000 euros from the Foundation Evz.

The country's train stations once acted as a central locations of National Socialist violence. People were often sent to forced labor here, while today only a few traces of this story can be found. Over 100 project ideas were submitted, which primarily promote civil society initiatives that deal with the dark past. Awareness of this topic is strengthened by the numerous educational, commemorative and event formats.

insight into the forced labor

What does forced labor actually mean? During the Second World War, the German war economy lacked many workers, which led to the mass recruitment of people from attacked countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Western Europe. From 1940, these men and women were compulsory to keep German industry going. According to [bpb] (https://www.bpb.de/themen/nationaloism- second-weltkrieg/ns-Zwangsarbeit/222627/ueberblick-die-nationalist-zwangsbeit/), the foreign workers provided more than a quarter of the workforce in many companies, in some cases even up to 60 percent. In August 1944, around six million civilian forced laborers worked in Germany, including many women.

The living conditions of these people were often catastrophic. Eastern workers and Polish forced laborers experienced particularly hard discrimination and goods of arbitrary actions of the Gestapo. While some specialists from Western Europe had relatively better conditions, most forced laborers suffered from hunger and bad accommodation. Numerous people tried to escape the exploitative work, but had to count on hard punishments.

memory culture and future prospects

The increasing attention to the events of that time is not only a sign of respect for the victims, but also an important step towards dealing with history. The voices of the survivors are heard and recognized with the compensation debate, which only got up 65 years after the end of the war. The “Memory, Responsibility and Future” foundation paid over 4.7 billion euros to 1.7 million survivors, which is long overdue recognition.

There are also digital initiatives, such as the interview archive "Forced Labor 1939-1945", which was created in cooperation with the "Memory, Responsibility and Future" Foundation, as well as the Free University of Berlin and the German Historical Museum. This archive aims to preserve and make the memories of over 20 million people who had to do forced labor for National Socialist Germany, as [https://www.zwangsbeit-archiv.de/impressum/index.html) reports.

The projects that are now being implemented in Cologne and other cities are a step in the right direction. You not only want to commemorate, but also enable learning so that the past is not forgotten. Through these initiatives, as a society, we can ensure that the voices of the past flow into our present and future.