Online archive of forced labor 1939–1945

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Forced labor 1939–1945
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Memories and history
Online archive with eyewitness interviews
languages Surface German & English & russ.
Registration required
On-line 2009
http://www.zwangsarbeit-archiv.de

The online archive “Forced Labor 1939–1945” presents a collection of digital reports from contemporary witnesses. Almost 600 former forced laborers from 27 countries tell their life stories in detailed audio and video interviews. The archive thus commemorates the twenty million people who had to do forced labor for Nazi Germany . The online application “Learning with Interviews” based on this makes the interviews accessible to schools.

Emergence

The interview collection was created between 2005 and 2006 as part of the project "Documentation of biographical interviews with former slave and forced laborers" using the oral history method . Under the scientific direction and coordination of the Institute for History and Biography (namely Alexander von Plato , Almut Leh and Christoph Thonfeld), 32 interview teams in 27 countries conducted the discussions. These teams included scientific institutions as well as experienced project groups from foundations and civil society initiatives.

The project

The project “Forced Labor 1939-1945. Memories and History ”is a cooperation between the “ Remembrance, Responsibility and Future ”foundation with the Free University of Berlin and the German Historical Museum . It started in autumn 2007 with the aim of preparing the collection of interviews for educational purposes, scientific use and an interested public and making them accessible online. The Free University of Berlin digitized the interview tapes, optimized sound and images and saved digital copies in various formats. A first online version of the archive has been available since January 2009, and since 2014 the archive has also been accessible in English and Russian with improved search options. The German Historical Museum inventoried and archived the approximately 2000 audio and video tapes and their accompanying materials. Selected interview excerpts are shown in a PC station in the German Historical Museum .

The archive

The collection contains 583 biographical interviews with concentration camp prisoners , prisoners of war and 'civilian' forced laborers. The video and audio interviews in the native language of contemporary witnesses and witnesses conducted. About a third of the interviewees were “slave workers” in concentration camps; almost half are women.

Almost all interviews were transcribed and translated into German. The interviews can be sorted by categories. In the archive, you can search for categories such as language, persecution group, area of ​​application. a clickable map shows all of the life and persecution stations mentioned in the interviews. The segmentation of the interviews lasting several hours, i.e. H. The linking of transcript and media file with the help of time codes enables full-text research that also leads precisely to individual interview passages. The scientific indexing of the interviews also provides tables of contents and comments. Short biographies and over 4,000 scans of private documents and photographs complement the total of around 2,000 hours of discussion.

In addition, introductory information on the subjects of forced labor , oral history , compensation, etc. can be found on the website of the online archive , supplemented by literature references and expert interviews on these areas ( Alexander von Plato , Constantin Goschler , Ulrike Jureit etc.). It also contains short films in which the contemporary witnesses report on the German raids on Poland, the Soviet Union and Italy, the bombing war, the liberation and the post-war trials.

Last but not least, the website offers didactic "entry points" for historical-political educational work. Groups of schoolchildren can prepare for a visit to the Flossenbürg Memorial or the Oberhausen Memorial Hall with the help of interview excerpts, additional text and image materials and various work tasks. This specific educational offer is complemented by the teaching materials "Contemporary witness interviews for teaching: video DVD - learning software - teacher booklet", which were published in 2010 together with the Federal Agency for Civic Education .

The learning environment

The online application “Learning with Interviews: Forced Labor 1939-1945”, which was created in 2016, is a competence-oriented teaching program for schoolchildren from the age of 14. The focus is on the life stories of former forced laborers. Seven members of different groups of victims report on their experiences in camps and factories, the behavior of Germans and their lives afterwards.

The 25-minute biographical short films are based on video interviews from the online archive “Forced Labor 1939-1945”; two background films provide information on forced labor and compensation as well as oral history . Info texts and method tips, timeline and lexicon, documents and maps help with contextualization. The tasks can be edited directly in the working window of the learning environment. The work proposals are suitable for different levels of all school types and are tailored to a 90-minute teaching unit.

Transcripts and translations, navigation and tasks, work windows and portfolio function allow research-based learning in regular lessons, on project days and presentation tests. Teachers can add their own assignments. Didactic comments and the memo and note function support effective and group-specific preparation of the lesson.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hitler's slaves: Analyzes of the history of forced labor in an international comparison, ed. by Alexander von Plato, Almut Leh and Christoph Thonfeld, Vienna: Böhlau 2008.
  2. ↑ Apostolopoulos, Nicolas / Pagenstecher, Cord (ed.): Remembering forced labor. Interviews with contemporary witnesses in the digital world, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86331-156-8 .