News
Shared Culture of Memory Considered at Nuremberg
Educators from the Auschwitz Museum and other memorials in Poland had a chance to examine the German perspective on commemorating the victims of Nazism. As part of the Tracks Project, they spent a week as invited guests at the Documentation Center in Nuremberg, which is located in the historic Congress Hall on the grounds where party rallies were held under the Third Reich.
The program included workshops, discussions with German guides and teachers, and a series of lectures. Eckart Dietzfelbinger of the Documentation Center and Prof. Robert Traba of the Polish Academy of Sciences Center for Historical Research in Berlin spoke about the evolution of the way in which Nazism and its effects have been presented and interpreted in Poland and Germany. Harald Schmid of Hamburg delivered a talk on "The Place of the Deeds of the Perpetrators, the Place of Suffering, and the Place of Education," in which he considered the presentation of German memorial sites from the perspective of the Europeanization of the culture of memory.
Aside from Nuremberg, the Polish-German group visited the site of the former Nazi concentration camp in Flossenbürg. Between 1938 and 1945, almost 100,000 prisoners, among whom Poles were the most numerous, were slave laborers there, working for the large German companies that supported the Third Reich war effort. Granite from a nearby quarry went into the construction of the Congress Hall in Nuremberg. The educators also toured the Documentation Center in the alpine town of Obersalzberg, where Hitler had a residence in the war years.
Participants in the seminar stressed the importance of the existence of original memorial sites in the educational process. Marta Królikowska-Hardek of Oświęcim, a guide at the Auschwitz Memorial, said that "it is very important that such places exist, and also to take care of them. They make an incredible impression. When you're right there, in Nuremberg, in the Congress Hall, you have the feeling of being connected to history. This is especially important for young people, since they understand history better this way. They can see with their own eyes that it all happened there. Groups visiting the Auschwitz Memorial also frequently stress the importance of originality."
The coordinator on the Polish side was the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. "I think that taking part in this project is a valuable experience for both sides, Polish and German. A great deal of time has been devoted to discussion and exchanges of opinion on the subject of the exhibition, as well as presenting various forms of education at memorial sites," said Magda Urbaniak of the Education Center. "We also discussed future cooperation. This was the first part of the project—the second will be held in Poland in September—and I think it was a good first step toward closer contacts. One possible form of cooperation could be a temporary education presented at both Memorials, or a joint educational project for young people from Poland and Germany. The first part of the project could be held in Nuremburg, in the place that, one might say, marked the beginning of what was later continued in Auschwitz. The second part of the project could be held at our Memorial."
The director of the Nuremberg Center, Hans-Christian Täuberich, held a similar view. "We would like to continue our cooperation and we are happy to see the interest from the Polish side, because this was not something that could be taken for granted in view of our difficult common past."
Documentation Center Nazi Party Rallying Grounds in Nuremberg
Founded in 2001, the Center is located in the north wing of the unfinished NSDAP Congress Hall, the largest of the extant monumental Nazi buildings. Work on the structure began in 1935. Modeled on the Colosseum in Rome, the edifice was planned to stand twenty stories high and hold fifty thousand people under its roof. Work was halted in 1939. The complex under construction included a stadium, parade ground, and maneuver ground set in an eleven-square-mile site in the southern part of the city.
Open in the Congress Hall since 2001, the Documentation Center has informational and research functions. It also features an exhibition on "Fascination and Terror" that attracts 180,000 visitors per year. Occupying 1,300 square meters of floor space, it shows the causes and effects of the national socialist system of terror. It uses new media, such as computer animation, films, and presentations on touch screens, in combination with photographs and documents. The exhibition explains the buildings at the site and informs visitors about the history and background of the Nazi party rallies.
Audioguides with texts and commentaries in seven languages, including Polish, are available to visitors. The educational center or "study forum" integrated into the exhibition also offers educational programs in Polish.
Obersalzberg Documentation Center
Hitler had a summer house here from the 1920s. Rebuilt in 1933 and known as the Berghof, it became his second command post, after Berlin. In the thirties, the Berghof became popular as the goal of pilgrimages by Hitler supporters. Schoolchildren and hikers came to see the Leader and his companion Ewa Braun.
Hermann Goering, Martin Bormann, and Albert Speer had villas of their own nearby. It was in Obersalzberg that British prime minister Neville Chamberlain agreed to turn the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia over to Hitler in September 1938. Polish minister of foreign affairs Józef Beck visited at the height of the Polish-German crisis in 1939.
The Allies bombed Obersalzberg in April 1945. The remains of Hitler's villa were blown up in 1952. Fragments of the foundations are still visible today.
The Documentation Center was opened in 1999 at the place where a hotel for the guests of the Nazis once stood. Sixty thousand people a year visit a permanent exhibition prepared by the institute for Contemporary History in Munich. Aside from themes directly connected with Hitler's mountain residence, it covers the subject of Nazi rule in general, including the cult of Hitler, Nazi race policy, mass murder, the Second World War, and the German resistance movement. The center also has educational programs.
The Tracks Project
An exhibition titled Tracks: The Logistics of Racial Madness is open from May 19 to October 31 at the Documentation Center Nazi Party Rallying Grounds in Nuremberg. It was prepared in cooperation with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum and the memorial sites at Majdanek, Bełżec, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Chełmno on the Ner.
The project is financed by Deutsche Bahn AG, the German State Railways, which is covering the cost of trips to Nuremberg by Polish study groups on their way to see the Tracks exhibition. Groups interested in traveling for free to Nuremberg to visit the Documentation Center Nazi Party Rallying Grounds should contact Silvia Feghelm (tel. +49 911 231 56 66) or Martina Christmeier (tel. +49 911 231 84 09)
Flossenbürg Concentration Camp
Flossenbürg Concentration Camp was founded in May 1938. The SS chose Flossenbürg as the site for a camp because of the granite deposits around the city. Until 1942, prisoners labored mainly in quarries owned by the SS company "DESt” (Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke, German Earth- and Stoneworks). After 1942, the SS opened about a hundred sub-camps to serve the armaments industry in north Bavaria, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) and Saxony. Prisoners at Flossenbürg itself were employed for arms production by Messerschmitt.
Between 1938 and 1945, about 100,000 prisoners were registered in Flossenbürg and its sub-camps. They came from 30 countries, but mostly from Poland, the USSR, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Poles were the most numerous. The number of victims of the camp is estimated to be at least thirty thousand.
In 2007, a permanent exhibition on Flossenbürg Concentration Camp 1938-1945 opened in the building that housed the camp laundry and bathhouse, which is partly preserved in its original state. The new exhibition centers around the individual stories of selected prisoners. The sub-sections include the history of the site before 1938, the setting up and expansion of the camp, labor and death in the stone quarries, the camp SS garrison, executions, the role of the camp in the economy and armaments industry of the Third Reich, the sub-camps, and the death marches. (Study based on materials from Flossenbuerg Memorial)
