© Bernd Bundschu
Where does the search for the forgotten begin? For the employees of the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma, the beginning of the search for forgotten objects involves many individual conversations that – sometimes by chance, sometimes by perseverance – lead them to their goal of finding personal objects of Roma and Sinti for the collection “The Forgotten Memory.” Project manager Vera Tönsfeldt spoke to Mihai Oencea on the occasion of the 2023 commemorations in Oświęcim, location of the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He told her about the life of his grandmother, Argentina Calin,who was born in southern Romania in 1948.
The Roma woman’s childhood years were marked by poverty, her early adult life by the repression of an antiminority, authoritarian communist government. She learned to embroider early on in the Romani women’s community – they used the cloths to decorate the rooms in the house. Tradition – the art of embroidery and community – brought Calin a welcome break from everyday life – and today her hand-embroidered tapestry is part of the collectionof the Education Agenda project. The textile, embellished with a peacock, flowers and the inscription “Pfau des Waldes, sage mir, wen ich vermisse” [Peacock of the forest, tell me whom I miss] by Argentina Calin, was one of her favorite pieces and hung next to her stove at home for many years. Nevertheless, she left the carpet to the collection team in Heidelberg and with it her memories of the life of a Roma woman in Romania. Her story opens up new paths to understanding the life of Roma in communist Romania, hitherto little-known partly due to inaccessible archives. And new paths to a minority that was able to stand its ground under harsh living conditions thanks to craftsmanship and solidarity.
In the project “The Forgotten Memory. Developing a collection for the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma,” a museum collection and an archive are being created to document the genocide committed against the Sinti and Roma, and their history of persecution.
Read more: www.sammlung.sintiundroma.de
The National Socialists set up more than 20,000 camps for civilian forced laborers on the territory of the German Reich. The probability that people worked and suffered in often inhumane conditions more than 80 years ago on sites where today we live, play soccer or contemplate art is high. Winterhude in Hamburg is one such place that has been transformed. Kampnagel is known to most people today as a center for contemporary, experimental art – very few people associate the name with Kampnagel AG, a company that manufactured armaments for the National Socialists by using an estimated 1,000 forced laborers. From 1939 onwards, the company, which had its origins in the ironworks and crane manufacturer Nagel & Kaemp, was part of the war industry. Those forcibly recruited for production from Ukraine, Belgium, or France were kept in six company-owned camps.
Their names and biographies were forgotten, like the history of the site itself. In the “Forced Labor and Resistance” project, the art institution Kampnagel has actively explored the depths of corporate history during the National Socialist era. In open jour fixes, they take the urban community on their research journey and tell the stories of those people whose life stories they are reconstructing – also using a kaleidoscope: “Kluge Köpfe erdachten es. Gefangene Hände machten es. Es ist aus Spiegeln und aus Glas. Kaleidoskop, so nennt sich das” [Smart minds conceived it. Captive hands formed it. It is made of mirrors and glass. It’s called a kaleidoscope]. Multiple sources contain references to kaleidoscopes, including the report of a forced laborer himself: The Belarusian Vitkovskij Vasilij Aleksevic relates in a postcard to the Kampnagel factories how he secretly made toys like this kaleidoscope after his shifts to exchange them for bread. Now, the kaleidoscope is used as a dramaturgical metaphor in the digital implementation of the research results in an augmented reality application.
In the project “Forced Labor and Resistance – Augmented Reality Application on the History of the Kampnagel Site” by the Kampnagel international center for fine arts, biographies of forced laborers and facts of resistance are digitally processed in an AR app for the site in Hamburg.
Read more: kampnagel.de/kaleidoskop-app
Prof. David Myers’ course on historical and contemporary antisemitism at the University of California (UCLA) ended with a practical exercise for the students. Their task was to search their own university library for books stolen by the National Socialists. The event was part of the Leo Baeck Institute’s Action Days, in which pupils and students were matched with libraries to search for lost works. Supervised by Dr. Diane Mizrachi, Librarian for Social Science, Jewish and Israel Studies, the young people found what they were looking for: The 1837 work by Avraham ben Avigdor entitled “Zekhor le- Avraham: sheʼelot u-teshuvot … ̣ve-shiṭah ʻal ̣ketsat masekhtot meha-Shas ̣ve-ḥidushim ʻal ha-Rambam …” was acquired by the Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums [Higher Institute for Jewish Studies] after 1872.
Avraham ben Avigdor was a rabbi and head of a rabbinical court, or Beth Din, in Istanbul. The book falls into the genre of responsa, an independent category of Jewish religious literature, and reports in a Q&A structure on practical matters such as determining which activities are permitted or not on the Sabbath.
For 70 years, the book remained in Berlin until the Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums was closed by the National Socialists and the library was looted and confiscated by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt [Reich Security Main Office]. This book changed hands and continents several times after the Second World War: After being recovered by the Allies at the end of the war, it first ended up in Jerusalem as part of a collection.
Later, the UCLA became interested in the book and finally acquired it from Israel afterlong negotiations. As of today, the book is still in the UCLA library in Los Angeles and will be kept there, because the aim of the project primarily is to recover the books virtually. The creators of the project also emphasize: “There are good reasons why the books are where they are today – it’s part of their history.”
In the “Have You Seen This Book?” project of the “Freunde und Förderer des Leo Baeck Instituts” [Friends and Sponsors of the Leo Baeck Institute], books from the library of the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, which was destroyed by the National Socialists, are being sought via an international campaign.
Read more: libraryoflostbooks.com
Author: Katrin Kowark, EVZ Foundation
