In commemoration of National Socialist injustice, September 1, 1939, marks a memorable day in several respects:

With the invasion of Poland on this very day 84 years ago, World War II began – and with it a systematic, racially motivated war of extermination against the Polish civilian population. More than one fifth of the overall population died, including more than three million Polish Jews and tens of thousands of Sinti and Roma. Even now, their stories have no permanent anchor in our culture of remembrance. The project funded in the Education Agenda NS-Injustice "Fates from Poland: 1939 to 1945. Remembering Locally & Digitally" is designed to change this, as you can see in this edition of our Pearl Finder section.

Tomorrow also commemorates the NS "euthanasia" crimes throughout Europe, to which approximately 300,000 people fell victim: Already in the spring of 1939, a group led by Philipp Bouhler, the director of Hitler's Chancellery as well as Karl Brandt, Hitler's personal physician, began secretly planning the murder of handicapped children and psychiatric patients. Under the code name "Aktion T4" this extermination program was legitimized by a letter of authorization from Hitler in October 1939, backdated to the day the war began on September 1, 1939.

In the "Aktion T4" program the National Socialists killed more than 70,000 people – because they were classified as "unworthy of life" on account of their physical, mental or psychological illnesses or social stigmatization. Sophie Ziegler writes about them, amongst others, in her report on two funded art projects. This article is already available on our website as a preview of our magazine of the Education Agenda NS-Injustice that will be published on September 12.

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Mr. Gander, the project recalls forgotten National Socialist forced labor camps which were once built on soccer pitches and sports fields. How many sites have been identified already, and are there regional focal points?

With well over 100 sites, the research so far exceeds the expectations we had at the start of the project. The focal points are in regions that were of great importance to the National Socialist war economy, such as the Ruhr region. In addition, however, these places can be found throughout the territory of Germany and Austria. The importance of forced labor at that time is manifested on the one hand in the broad spread of the locations and, on the other hand, in the diversity in terms of the type, size and period of existence of camps. Built over with commercial or residential space, in some places today there is nothing to remind us of the past, either as a sports field or as a NS forced labor camps. However, at other locations soccer is played again today, sometimes by clubs from the professional sector, mostly by local amateur sports clubs, which we of course also want to address with our project.