CULTURE RESCUERS: Traveling exhibition opened

 

"They were herded like sheep into the birch grove six kilometers from the city. And the murderers ordered ten of them to lie face down in the pit there. And as soon as they lay there, the soldiers came and shot each one of them. Then ten more. Almost 400 people were killed there".
Perets Goldstejn recalled the mass shooting of Jews on May 20, 1942 in the town of Hoshch in the west of what is now Ukraine. He escaped, hid and began to record what he had experienced in his diary. His motive: "I have to write down this terrible story to show the world just how wrong it is".
Goldstejn's story is part of the online documentary "The War and its Victims" about the German war of extermination against the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1945.
In the ten episodes of the documentary, dekoder, a non-profit journalism portal, tells the story of the war from the victims' perspective. Ten stories are "representative" of almost 27 million war victims of the Soviet Union - from Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and large parts of Russia.
The project aims to render as many fates as possible visible: They need support for this. You can find out how you or your organization can participate in the project on the project.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been speaking out against right-wing extremism in demonstrations across Germany in recent weeks: Which particular challenges do civil society initiatives face in their engagement in rural areas? "The recent events and news have also shaken up many people in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. There have been demonstrations and actions at numerous locations. It seems that the hitherto silent majority is standing up and sending a signal. And that's how it should be! I would describe the situation as something between tense and highly motivated," says Dr. Constanze Jaiser from the association "RAA - Demokratie und Bildung Mecklenburg-Vorpommern" (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Regional Office for Education, Integration and Democracy). The association carries out the project überLEBENSWEGE of the Education Agenda NS-Injustice. In an interview for the "No Place for Hate" section, Constanze Jaiser talks about the association's work and her fight against right-wing extremism.

Children of forced laborers – Why many families kept quiet for so long

 

Ms. Kauhanen, your project draws attention to continuities and ruptures in West and East German postwar memories. Which approach did you use when conducting the family interviews? 

We took an in-depth look at National Socialist crimes and their impact on family memories in East and West Germany. It was about critical reflection on divided German history, understood literally and symbolically. We were and still are guided by the question of how this can be presented in an appealing, inclusive and dignified way, in particular for young people in a post-migrant society. [...]
In our diverse team, we have jointly developed guidelines for biographical interviews. Due to various points of contact with the National Socialist era, we were able to include perspectives. However, there is a real lack of personal references to GDR history for which reason an inductive approach is vital for our expressive material. We conducted interviews with up to three generations of a family. There is a separate guide for each generation that builds bridges between the generations. We obtained access to our interview partners via professional and personal networks. We also made use of both digital and analog advertising options. We gathered abundant audio and, in some cases, videos from the interviews we conducted.