Since the 1980s, there have been increasing efforts by heritage offices in Germany and Austria, and many of the countries that were occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II, to locate places of ...former Nazi terror and, where possible, to protect them from further destruction in order to preserve them as places of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism. However, methodological considerations and approaches for locating, recording, and eventually assessing the 'heritage value' of former Nazi terror sites remain rather obscure, since little has been published on the methodological approaches taken by different institutions. This article presents a systematic workflow for recording former sites of Nazi terror, which was developed in the framework of the Natzweiler-Concentration-Camp-System-Project based at the Heritage Office of the State of Baden-Württemberg (Landesamt für Denkmalpflege im Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart). It aims to provide a methodological 'How-To' for creating archaeological inventories of former Nazi camps, associated sites and whole 'landscapes of destruction', hints at where to locate useful primary sources, but also to critically reflect on challenges encountered during the project and how they could be approached in the future.
August Hirt (1898–1945) was director of the Institute of Anatomy of the Reichsuniversität Strassburg from November 1941 to November 1944. During this period, he was involved in many criminal ...activities: mustard gas experiments on prisoners of KL Natzweiler-Struthof, creating a collection of Jewish skeletons by gassing 86 Jews from KL Auschwitz in the Struthof-Natzweiler gas chamber, and involvement in experiments on phosgene gas performed by Otto Bickenbach. Extensive literature exists on these crimes. However, there has been very little work completed on the so-called normal activity of the Institute of Anatomy of which he was head and in particular the question of deliveries of corpses. We estimate that between 244 and 724 bodies were delivered to the Anatomical Institute of the Reichsuniversität Strassburg between 1942 and 1944. In the course of our investigations, we have determined the identity of 232 corpses received between 1942 and 1944, the vast majority of Soviet prisoners of war from two hospitals for prisoners of war (Strassburg and Mutzig). Other sources of dead bodies have been found, such as hospital patients and French citizens who had been executed by shooting. Most of the corpses were used for dissection by medical students, but many anatomical preparations were also made from the bodies. The bodies were buried during and after the war, but the fate of the anatomical and histological specimens is unknown. Newly discovered archival record allowed us to identify and find three jars with tissues from the 86 gassed Jews. These pieces were in the Museum of the Institute of Forensic Medicine of Strasbourg. At this point the following proposals are made: (1) opening of the Medical Faculty of Strasbourg archives, (2) creation of an historical commission, (3) identification and publication of the complete inventory of all preparations at the Strasbourg Anatomical Museum, (4) research of the fate of the dry and wet preparations made under National Socialism, (5) verification of histological slides, embryological specimens and the tissues from the institutes already existing under National Socialism, (6) verification of the pieces of the Museum of Forensic Medicine, (7) publications of these results and information of the press and (8) creation of a memorial for the victims of the NS delivered to the Institute of Anatomy.
Working memory Kadar, Marlene
Working memory,
2015, 2015, 2015-07-31, Letnik:
55
eBook
Working Memory: Women and Work in World War II speaks to the work women did during the war: the labour of survival, resistance, and collaboration, and the labour of recording, representing, and ...memorializing these wartime experiences. The contributors follow their subjects' tracks and deepen our understanding of the experiences from the imprints left behind. These efforts are a part of the making of history, and when the process is as personal as many of our contributors' research has been, it is also the working of memory. The implication here is that memory is intimate, and that the layering of narrative fragments that recovery involves brings us in touching distance to ourselves. These are not the stories of the brave little woman at home; they are stories of the woman who calculated the main chance and took up with the Nazi soldier, or who eagerly dropped the apron at the door and picked up a paintbrush, or who brazenly bargained for her life and her mother's with the most feared of tyrants. These are stories of courage and sometimes of compromise— not the courage of bravado and hype and big guns, but rather the courage of hard choices and sacrifices that make sense of the life given, even when that life seems only madness. Working Memory brings scholarly attention to the roles of women in World War II that have been hidden, masked, undervalued, or forgotten.
