Regional History and Remembrance Culture: An Exhibition on Upper Franconian Concentration Camp Subcamps and Marginalised Victim Groups

Wie kann gute Erinnerungsarbeit und die nachhaltige Aufarbeitung der NS-Geschichte aussehen? Eine Möglichkeit, die NS-Geschichte in Oberfranken zu erforschen und in die Gesellschaft zu transferieren, unternahmen wir in den letzten Jahren am Institut für Fränkische Landesgeschichte. In mehreren Lehrveranstaltungen an den Universitäten Bayreuth und Bamberg widmeten wir uns dem Konzentrationslager Flossenbürg, dessen weitläufigem System an Außenlagern und Außenkommandos sowie den Menschen, die von den Nationalsozialisten verfolgt, misshandelt und ermordet wurden.

Poster exhibition for use in school lessons

Together with committed history students from the two Upper Franconian universities, Benedikt Martin Ertl and Verena Christina Jeschke designed a poster exhibition with accompanying publication for use in school lessons based on the knowledge gained in the courses. With the project "In our midst. Concentration Camp Subcamps in Upper Franconia" we pursued several goals at the same time. On the one hand, we wanted to give teachers at secondary schools in Upper Franconia material to deal with regional Nazi history more adequately in class. On the other hand, we wanted to counteract the widespread narrative that the National Socialist crimes mostly took place far away in extermination camps. On the contrary, the crimes were omnipresent due to the extensive network of concentration camps and subcamps as well as numerous forced labour and prisoner of war camps, and they also took place in our immediate neighbourhood. Hence the deliberately chosen title "In our midst".

Focus on marginalised victim groups

In addition, we wanted to use the exhibition to remember marginalised prisoner groups that were long underrepresented in the culture of remembrance and still are to some extent today. These include Sinti and Roma, "homosexuals" and "professional criminals". In addition, we focused on a group of political prisoners who have so far only appeared marginally in German remembrance culture: Spanish communists and anti-fascists. These prisoners, most of whom were also called "Red Spaniards", were men and women who had fought on the side of the Republic against the putschists led by Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and hundreds of thousands of whom had to flee to France in 1939. Thousands of these Spaniards took part in the French Resistance against the National Socialists. Many of them were arrested and deported to German concentration camps, including the Franconian subcamps of the Flossenbürg concentration camp.

Cooperation with the Evangelisches Bildungswerk in Bayreuth

Fortunately, the poster exhibition was well received by the target group and beyond. This is also how the cooperation with Angelika Hager from the Evangelisches Bildungswerk in Bayreuth came about. In a joint commemorative event on 9 November, the exhibition posters will be presented publicly for the first time in the large hall of the Bildungswerk (Richard-Wagner-Str. 24) and the exhibition presentation will be accompanied by a diverse programme. In addition to a specialist lecture on the subject, Bayreuth schoolchildren will read out the biographies of five women and men who were imprisoned in Flossenbürg and / or one of its subcamps. In addition, pupils from the Markgräfin-Wilhelmine-Gymnasium will provide musical accompaniment to the event. The event aims to raise awareness of the topic and keep alive the memory of the victims' suffering. As the French existentialist Albert Camus said: "Man is not to blame for history. He is only to blame when it repeats itself."

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