© Alina Simmelbauer
Der Krieg und seine Opfer [The War and its Victims]
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 online medium dekoder.org, which has won the Grimme Online Award twice, is developing a science-based multimedia special in cooperation with the Department of Eastern European History at Heidelberg University that will focus on these victims in the territories of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.
An interactive map of the crime will be at the center of the project on the one hand, and on the other hand concrete biographies of victims, which will be narrated and illustrated using scrollable graphic novels. The multimedia special is supported by background texts and a transnational "knowledge sourcing" campaign with participatory elements, intended to identify new sources on locations of the violence of war or victims' and perpetrators' biographies.
The project's content is based on the results of the trilateral research project "Violence against Civilians on the Eastern Front of World War II", conducted at Heidelberg University and led by Prof. Dr. Tanja Penter.
Cooperation partner: Lehrstuhl für Osteuropäische Geschichte an der Universität Heidelberg
Funding country: Germany
Duration: 01.12.2022 until 31.12.2024