ORTE DER ERINNERUNG

The app shows places of persecution and resistance in Saarland from 1933-45

The years 1933 to 1945 also left deep marks on the Saar. Places and people testify to persecution, marginalization and resistance during the Nazi era. The app “Places of Remembrance” tells of this on several discovery tours through Saarland cities and communities.

The app invites school classes, youth groups, but also interested adults to deal with the Nazi era on the Saar.

The tour "Resistance and Persecution 1933 to 1945 in Saarbrücken" provides information about places where opposition members from the Saar area met with refugee politicians, trade unionists and journalists who moved to what was then still a free Saar area after the Nazi seizure of power had fled. Places like the pension of the former member of the Reichstag and co-founder of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt, Marie Juchacz, in Saarbrücken Bahnhofstrasse as the focal point. There is also a stumbling block for the SPD politician and resistance fighter Johanna Kirchner, who is also taking refuge in Saarbrücken. Shops that show the charisma that Jewish life had not only for Saarbrücken Bahnhofstrasse. There was also the former synagogue, the creative space for the then Rabbi Friedrich Rülf, who was of great importance for the lives of Jews. After the Saar vote on January 13, 1935 and the associated affiliation with Nazi Germany, they were quickly victims of persecution and extermination.

Stolpersteine ​​in front of the town hall are reminiscent of the Saarbrücken city councilors Fritz Dobisch, Wendel Schorr and Peter Roth, who were persecuted for their resistance under National Socialism. The “Willi-Graf-Ufer” in the city center was named after Willi Graf, who grew up in Saarbrücken and was a member of the student resistance group “Die Weiße Rose”. His grave is outside the city center in the old cemetery St. Johann. The "Gautheater" opened in 1938 in the presence of Hitler and Goebbels was a "present from the Führer" for the successful Saar referendum in 1935 and was considered a showpiece of Nazi architecture. On the other hand, the memorial of the same name on Saarbrücken's Schlossplatz, designed in 1993 by the Paris-based concept artist Jochen Gerz, is deliberately invisible. Memory breaks new ground here! Instead of a stone memorial, Gerz invites visitors to the square with his “Invisible Memorial”: “Think about it”. The headquarters of the Secret State Police was housed in the castle from 1935 to 1945. The places of torture were the detention cells in the cellar that have survived to this day, and the prisoners were often transferred to the “Gestapo camp Neue Bremm” near the border. The exhibition "Ten instead of a thousand years" in the Saar Historical Museum provides detailed information about this.

The tour "Places of Remembrance for Nazi History in Homburg" provides information at six stations in the Homburg city area, among other things, on the topics of Jewish life, the Jewish cemetery, euthanasia / murders or the Homburg police detention camp, a subcamp of the SS special camp / Hinzert concentration camp, and thus performs a contribution to a sustainable and lively culture of remembrance.

The app is versatile: texts, audios and images can be used together or solo for the tour. The texts are deliberately formulated in a compact manner. There are also historical photos of the respective locations. A third level is formed by audios with statements from contemporary witnesses, newspaper articles and literary texts.

The app is not intended for remembrance from the sofa, so a special scavenger hunt module was built into each tour. Questions are asked whose answers can only be found on site.