The projects of the Education Agenda NS-Injustice

Ted Hearne (composition) and Daniel Fish (direction), together with 5 singers, a chamber orchestra and a youth choir, embark on a journey through the German and US-American collective memory, examining its influence on younger generations, and in the process they create the world premiere "Unnamed". As in the U.S. musical series "Glee", the basic situation is a classroom where school students deal with group-focused enmity by singing, building a bridge between the material.

The artist Paul Goesch (1885-1940) is considered a visionary of modernism. But he was also a psychiatric patient for many years and he was murdered in 1940 in the context of the NS "euthanasia" crimes in the killing facility in Brandenburg an der Havel. The project is developing a participatory curated exhibition on the life and work of Paul Goesch at Brandenburg an der Havel.

Together with the publisher Zeitbild Verlag, the Zeitbild Foundation carries out a nationwide discussion on the topic of NS "euthanasia". Artists and school students develop artworks in workshops at five former NS "transit camps" sites.

Together, school students and teachers explore compositions by Pavel Haas and Hans Krása as well as texts of the lyricist Ilse Weber; they learn about the inhumane living conditions in the Theresienstadt ghetto and deal with the question of how artistic creation was possible in that place at that time.

Roma held as prisoners by the National Socialist terror regime in the camps of the occupied territories expressed their experiences of persecution and suffering in songs. Such musical heritage has been passed on to the present day and is a testimony to local historical knowledge, to their own knowledge of persecution, and to transgenerational elements of remembrance in the course of time.

After decades of denial and repression, it was not until the 1980s that the Federal Republic of Germany began to deal more intensively with the National Socialist eugenics crimes. The objective of the project is to make the forgotten sites of National Socialist eugenics crimes and the lives of those affected visible, and in doing so to point out the dimension of the crimes. The offerings serve as an incentive to reflect on one's own ways of thinking about and dealing with people with illnesses and disabilities.

The project addresses the relationships between Germans and so-called "foreign workers", which were forbidden under National Socialist law, and in particular the biographies of their descendants. Even after 1945, their parents' history of persecution and their children's experiences of discrimination and exclusion were often taboo and have been lacking in the culture of remembrance until now, and have hardly been investigated academically.

To date, there is neither a museum collection nor an archive documenting the "forgotten Holocaust" against the Sinti and Roma people and their history of persecution. The project aims to fill this gap and add a cultural memory of the persecution of the Sinti and Roma to the existing collection of the Documentation Center.

Can Germany and Greece come to terms with the little-known history of forced labor under the Nazis in occupied Greece? Using innovative and participatory forms of history education and bi-national encounters, projects can strengthen mutual understanding and thus European values.

The touring exhibition "Culture Rescuers: How to Resist?", which can be visited in Hamburg, Dresden, and Stuttgart in 2024, addresses National Socialist injustice perpetrated against marginalized and persecuted groups and makes it possible to see how victims of National Socialist persecution helped to save culture under the most difficult conditions.

Anti-black racism cannot be seen as a new phenomenon in our contemporary society. This is particularly evident in the far-reaching, historically transformed lines of continuity. These continuities and interdependencies will be highlighted and developed in the project via multi-faceted perspectives. For this purpose, the project will use examples and biographies of people of color, such as Hagar Martin Brown, persecuted during the National Socialist era.

The biographical memories of survivors and the historical sites of violence and persecution constitute important pillars of our culture of remembrance. The system and ideology of National Socialism become comprehensible due to their preserved testimonies. Future generations are invited to search for traces and explore their own questions. überLEBENSWEGE combines a local and biographical search for traces with digital spaces of remembrance that can provide correlations of understanding beyond borders.

In cooperation with numerous partners, the project explores the locations of NS forced labor camps on soccer pitches and sports fields in Germany and Austria with the aim of bringing them to the attention of a large public. The project, which is being carried out jointly by the Augustaschacht and Gestapokeller memorial sites, is designed to reach interested people through the everyday phenomenon of soccer and to encourage their interest and motivation in coming to terms with forced labor camps. Thereby, on the one hand, previous commitment is bundled and, on the other hand, a dealing with this chapter of the history of soccer pitches and sports fields will be initiated.

The project "The War and its Victims" addresses the crimes against the civilian population during World War II in the territories of the Soviet Union under the National Socialist occupation. The Holocaust, forced labor or the targeted burning of villages - all these and other acts of violence committed during the war of extermination against the Soviet Union are often neglected in the public consciousness.

The Leo Baeck Institutes in Jerusalem and London and the "Freunde und Förderer des Leo Baeck Instituts" [Friends and Sponsors of the Leo Baeck Institute] are dedicating a digital exhibition to the history of the destroyed library of the Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums [Higher Institute for Jewish Studies] in Berlin (from 1872 to 1942). Today, the remains of the library are scattered all over the world. As part of a supporting international campaign, the public is invited to help in the search for property stolen by the National Socialists. Decentralized physical installations supplement the online exhibition at the current whereabouts of the books.

Kampnagel represents contemporary performance, dance and theater in Hamburg for 40 years. So far, there is little evidence of the site's past during the National Socialist era. In the project Kampnagel is regarded as a place of remembrance and also of encounter and the history is reviewed. In doing so, an innovative prototype will be developed which demonstrates a cultural center's critical examination of its own history in the sense of a pioneering, responsible culture of remembrance.

The project "ErinnerungZeit" intends to do more than commemorate the victims of National Socialist injustice. The Berghof Foundation's animated graphic novel creates a digital, peace educational space which promotes critical historical awareness as well as media literacy among young people aged 12 to 17. The graphic novel contributes to a multi-perspective, inclusive and participatory National Socialist culture of remembrance in German-speaking countries.

In the project "What Remains? Interactive Installation on West and East German Postwar Memories", continuities as well as ruptures in German family histories are highlighted, thereby creating a new form of remembrance which does not end with World War II.

How can historical eyewitnesses from the National Socialist era be encountered in the future? Possible applications, opportunities, and challenges for the future role of volumetrically recorded interviews of historical eyewitnesses from the National Socialist era will be tested and presented in the field of history education in and outside of schools.

Spiegel, Stern, Henri Nannen or the inventor of Tagesthemen [German daily news program] - all of them have a National Socialist background. Nevertheless, antisemitism was not born out of nowhere in 1933 and did not disappear in 1945. Whether before, during or after the National Socialist era, mass media had an important part in the spread of antisemitic images and narratives. Have they been under pressure, or did they exert pressure? And what lessons can we learn from history?

The Polish-German cooperation project aims to establish a comprehensive multilingual database and internet platform with all available information on victims of National Socialism originating from Poland. This information will be used as a basis for initiatives in the field of culture of remembrance from all over Germany in order to develop educational formats to keep the memory of this chapter of German-Polish history alive.

Using the stock of the approximately 1,000 reparation files of the bayerische Landesverband, the process of reparation after 1945 up to the present will be illustrated using a multi-perspective approach. The project aims to digitize and scientifically analyze the reparation files in compliance with research ethics and data protection regulations.

The pilot project "Welche Stimme haben wir?" aims to involve descendants of the victims of National Socialist persecution with their diverse range of experiences, perspectives and wishes in memorial site and memory work. New, innovative and exemplary exhibition modules, educational materials as well as other outreach formats for memorial site work are being developed in skills workshops together with the descendants of victims of National Socialist persecution.

Under National Socialism, hundreds of thousands of cultural assets were forcibly sold, stolen, expropriated. The Allied restitution legislation attempted to reverse this theft. The project examines the principles practiced at the time and their afterlife in the so-called "Handreichung".

Antisemitism is a problem for society as a whole – and countering this problem requires a joint effort by all societal players. We want to start in the midst of society, where thousands of people with the most diverse backgrounds meet every day: the workplace.

The transnational project compares the persecution of swing youth in northwest Germany, the Czech Potápki and the swing and jazz music scene by the National Socialists in occupied Poland and develops multi-perspective, interdisciplinary and participatory educational formats.

Propaganda and violence against LGBTIQ+ people is on the rise, and the media play a key role in the spread of homophobic and transphobic narratives. “History Unit: Reframing Queer Narratives in Media” addresses this responsibility in the context of the persecution of queer people under National Socialism, as well as in today’s political realities. The project’s aim is to enrich the public discourse with historical perspectives and to get the mainstream media to unequivocally condemn any queer-hostile rhetoric.

People had and have to leave their homes for a variety of reasons: climate change, economic or political instability, persecution or war. Our project is focused on stories of escape told by people who have become victims of National Socialist injustice. In this context, we extend the time frame beyond the wartime years: Racist and political discrimination and persecution forced people to flee since the seizure of power – and for many of them, their journey did not end in 1945. However, who are these refugees, what paths did they follow, and how did they deal with their experiences?

Collaboration and resistance determine the shapes and forms of Nazi injustice in Europe. Together with artists from Greece, Germany, Spain and Ukraine, we will look at lesser-known fates of persecution in numerous workshops and in the production of three theatre productions with the theatre directors Prodromos Tsinikoris (Greece), Stas Zhyrkov (Ukraine/Germany) and José Luis Arellano García (Spain). We will look critically at our traditions of remembrance and, with the means of artistic education in order to jointly open up a European space of remembrance. Shows in different countries, particularly targeted to teenagers, alongside a digital strategy of sharing artistic productions, will reach a big audience across Europe.

The aim of the Informal Participatory Education on Holocaust (IPEH) project is to involve young people in innovative and creative ways of remembrance of the Holocaust (including Sinti/Roma and LGBT victims) focused on local aspects and stories of victims, bringing personalised and participatory learning experience on social media platforms they prefer, thus making young people agents of change in their environments by tapping the potential of the online sphere and bringing education activities to larger target audiences.

The project will open up new ways of remembrance of Jewish life in Germany, Poland and Serbia. Jewish biographies from the Centropa archive will be researched by young people and processed with artistic approaches in remembrance projects which include places of Jewish life and activity in the cities of Bielsko-Biała, Kielce, Belgrade, Berlin, and Mannheim.

The transnational oral history project is the first to generate academically sound knowledge about the effects of German "reparations" on survivors and their relatives. The basis for this are video interviews with statements from survivors and/or their descendants coming from five countries: Germany, Poland, Israel, Belgium and the area of the former Soviet Union focusing, specifically on Ukraine. Partner organizations will conduct the interviews on site and then analyze them scientifically.

In cooperation with the Deutsche Kulturrat [German Cultural Council], the Foundation for Digital Games Culture is testing location-based formats for establishing a culture of remembrance of National Socialist injustice supported by games in dialog with memorial sites, museums, and cultural encounter places throughout Germany. All formats are supported by needs-based measures to impart skills to local employees in gaming culture.

“Walter” was the alias of a myth-enshrouded resistance fighter in Sarajevo, whose identity the Nazi occupiers were unable to find out. In our project, the question “Wer is Walter?” is symbolic of the observation that we in Europe often know little to nothing about the history(s) of resistance to Nazism and Nazi occupation during World War Two in other European countries.

The project aims to gain a broader perspective on the unique historical phenomenon of the Holocaust and the legal steps taken by Israel and Germany and international institutions to address the consequences of the tragedy and to optimize future strategies for dealing with the past.

The participatory educational project for and with students and teachers from all over Europe develops a digital multi-perspective toolkit for historical education.

Digital sound worlds from everyday life and resistance. Media installations and workshops on remembrance culture 4.0.

Forced labor in Leipzig and dealing with anti-democratic radicalization on the Internet.

Remembering as coming to terms with the present: Modular theater project with references to Ukraine and Latin America as well as theater lab with young people.

Images of the deportations from the German Reich between 1938 and 1945.

App and website for access to persecution, resistance and acts of the Nazi era in Frankfurt am Main.

Multimedia web portal on Jewish life in Cologne between 1933 and 1945.

Historical education as a prerequisite for democratic action in Lower Saxony.

Offers for public administration in dealing with anti-Semitism and racism.

The history and present of National Socialist crimes in the everyday actions of the police and judiciary.

The partners from France, Poland, Lithuania and Germany, together with local history initiatives and young people, are developing a 360° exhibition on the European dimension of Nazi forced labor. The project makes history, the system and, above all, the victims of Nazi forced labor visible.

Which persecution stories and places have been forgotten? This question is at the center of the trilateral activation and education project against anti-Semitism, racism and LGBTIQ hostility.

A transnational and intergenerational research and educational project on the topic of " stolen children" during the Nazi era.

Training courses for local government employees on the topics of anti-Semitism, Nazi injustice, racism and misanthropy.