About the Museum of Forced Labor

The permanent exhibition at our museum is based on the international touring exhibition "Forced Labor. The Germans, the Forced Laborers, and the War," which was made possible by funds from the Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future Foundation (EVZ).

The opening of the Museum as a third site for historical-political education by the Buchenwald and Mittelbau Dora Memorials Foundation transports the work of the Foundation into the heart of society in the city of Weimar. Here, we wish to establish the Museum as an important partner for other city, cultural, and museum institutions and help shape a way of living together that is based on an awareness for history, democratic principles, and an openness to the world.

From our perspective, the topic of Forced Labor is especially well suited to demonstrating how the crimes of the Nazis were rooted in society and what parallels exist in relation to the present. The forced labor of 12 million people in the German Reich during the war took place largely in the public eye and in the midst of German society. Encounters between Germans and forced laborers in the workplace and in public space were an everyday occurrence. Racism and the marginalization of forced laborer were not hidden from any German’s view.

Over the last few years, various experts have taken part in discussions about forced labor, marginalization, and racism as part of the discussion format "In Gesellschaft." A central question was how forced labor under the Nazis relates to us. How can we meet our social responsibility toward the crimes of forced labor? To what extent are questions that we have about forced labor also relevant today?

In addition, the interventions that we developed together with Weimar artist Anke Heelemann for the opening of the museum offer confrontations with the topic of forced labor in everyday situations and in surprising and disconcerting ways. Who were the forced laborers and in what environment do they have to live in Germany? Do we recognize things from their private photographs and in the rules and provisions that determined their everyday lives?

These are the kind of questions we wish to pursue in our work with the permanent collection and also in the city space of Weimar, identifying the traces of forced labor under the Nazis.