Tag: Nazi forced labor

The film “Neuaubing/Freiham” is about the development of the new urban quarter in Freiham and the parallel process of making the historic site of the RAW camp visible. In the postwar years the historic context of the site was increasingly forgotten as ever more time went by and the site was used for various other purposes.

Nationwide social debates about how to confront the issue of forced labor as an aspect of the Nazi past and about possible compensation payments for the former forced laborers took place at a national level in the 1990s, while plans for the 350-hectare new development in Freiham began to take shape in the 2000s. Both of these developments contributed to making the history of the RAW camp more visible again.

The initial planning for the Freiham development included the historic site of the former camp. Plans to build a large supermarket and a furniture store there prompted the users, who had been using the barracks as studios and workshops since the 1970s, and later the City of Munich, to have historical research carried out.

Today, the historic site is subject to a preservation order while in Freiham the first apartments and educational facilities have been completed. Bechtle and Kahane explore the reciprocal effects of these developments from the perspective of the manager of the new quarter, Daniel Genée. This raises questions about what function the future memorial site will have for the diverse local population, what expectations are associated with it, and what its practical implications are.

With the fall of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in July 1943 the so-called Pact of Steel between fascist Italy and Nazi Germany came to an end. The Kingdom of Italy concluded a ceasefire with the Allies on September 8, 1943, and declared war on Germany. That day the Italian soldiers who had previously been fighting on the side of the Germans suddenly became enemies of the Nazi regime. Those who were in areas controlled by Germany were taken prisoner. If they refused to go on fighting on the side of Nazi Germany they became prisoners of war and were brutally exploited as forced laborers.

After their liberation they returned to an entirely different Italy. Their ambivalent story was difficult to integrate in the Italian postwar narrative. Many of them felt deeply isolated and from then on never spoke about their experiences again. Very few of these contemporary witnesses are still alive; for their families, the time their fathers spent in Germany has left a large hole in their lives. The reportage asks what the role of historic experiences is in family and transnational collective memory.

“Forced Abroad” is based on the original journal entries of Jan Henrik Bazuin, born in Rotterdam in 1925. In 1940 Nazi Germany occupied The Netherlands. When the German Wehrmacht bombed Rotterdam in May of that year, the Bazuin family’s printshop, where Jan probably worked, was destroyed. Four years later the Nazis staged a major raid of Rotterdam in which 52,000 people were deported to work in the German Reich in the space of only two days. Jan initially escaped, probably because he was outside the city helping with the harvest in the east of the country. He began writing a journal in November 1944. His daily entries describe wartime in the occupied city and the ever-worsening famine. He also tells of quarrels with his parents and with his new love, Annie, and later of his experiences in Germany.

Bazuin returned to the Netherlands after the war but he was never able to speak about his experiences. His journal, however, is an important piece of testimony for historical research. It was only discovered by his son Leon in 2001, after Jan Bazuin’s death.

The visual novel is based on the journal entries but also contains fictitious and interactive elements. The experiences of the protagonist, Jan de Boer, are based on those of Jan Bazuin: his deportation from Rotterdam to Munich, the separation from his parents and from his first love. Ultimately, he finds ways to survive in Germany. In his memory album, which users compile while playing the game, historical background information is made available to help understand the story. The illustrations are by the cartoonist Barbara Yelin. The book publication “Jan Bazuin: Tagebuch eines Zwangsarbeiters” (C.H. Beck) was produced in collaboration with Yelin.