Private Memory
and Public
Commemoration
Private Memory and Commemoration
Acknowledgements
This source collection
is made by Thomas
Rettig with the support
of Chris Rowe.
This collection is part
of the unit “Internment
without a trial:
Examples from the
Nazi and Soviet
regimes” that is
developed in the MultiFacetted Memory
project.
More information
www.euroclio.eu/multifacetted-memory
One of the key questions when dealing with the cruel history of
concentration and internment camps is, how they are
remembered. Public commemoration varies from society to
society and often changes significantly under the influence of
historical events. For example, after the end of the Cold War there
was a notable change in public remembrance in Central and
Eastern Europe. Two generations later, after the fall of the Berlin
Wall, there was another dramatic shift in public commemoration
and a surge of new memorials dedicated to the victims of
totalitarian regimes. Private memory, which is more individual and
personal, often differs in tone from public commemoration.
The aim of this collection of sources is to illustrate different
approaches to public commemoration and private memory; and
how they can give rise to controversy. The sources include images
of memorial sites regarding different aspects of postwar public
memory; and examples of more personal and private memorials
reflecting dissenting views – such as those from survivors, or from
the descendants of the victims.
Mother Motherland, Kiev
The huge memorial to the Red Army and the liberation of Kiev dominates the skyline
from cliffs above the Dnieper river.
Monument for the victims of Nazi-terror
The Mahnmal für die Opfer der NS-Gewaltherrschaft (Monument for the victims of
Nazi-terror) at the former Gestapo headquarters in the Hotel Metropol, located in
Vienna. The building was demolished and replaced by a small park and this memorial.
The inscription reads: "Here stood the House of the Gestapo. To those who believed in
Austria it was hell. To many it was the gate to death. It went down in ruins, just like the
'Thousand Year Reich'. But Austria was reborn and with her our dead, the immortal
victims.”
Monument at Theresienstadt
Memorial at the cemetery of the Little Fortress at Terezin (Theresienstadt), the
internment camp north of Prague in what was the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and
Moravia (now Czech Republic)
Memorial to deported Latvian children
Memorial to Latvian children deported in 1941, most of whom died in exile. The
memorial marks the railway platform near Riga from where the trains went east to the
USSR.
Remaining part of Warsaw Ghetto wall in a backyard of Sienna 55.
Mask of Sorrow
Memorial erected at Magadan, Russia, in 1996
to commemorate the many prisoners who
suffered and died in the Gulag prison camps in
the Kolyma region of the Soviet Union during
the 1930s, 40s, and 50s
The Right to a Homeland is a Human Right
An irredentist memorial at Unterretzbach in Austria, commemorating the Sudetenland ethnic
Germans expelled from South Moravia in Czechoslovakia after the Second World War.
Monument for the Austrian victims of the Shoah
Monument for the Austrian victims of the Shoah, designed by the English artist, Rachel
Whiteread. It was erected by the City of Vienna in 2000 and given the name A Nameless Library.
The spines of the books facing inwards refer to the immense contribution of the Jewish people to
the culture and literacy of the whole Danube region. Their legacy once provided a cultural
framework and defined a whole empire. Now we cannot enter to this knowledge, a fact beautifully
symbolized by the lack of door knobs. The monument also represents coming to terms with
history. European nations stood by while whole ethnic groups were excluded from national
cultures as Jews and other persecuted groups were denied the right to exist. Now we are finally
interested in the dark side of history, we find that it is no longer accessible. The monument is as
unmovable and impenetrable as the past it commemorates.
Monument to Jasenovac concentration
camp.
Jasenovac was established by the state
authorities of the Independent state of
Croatia during World War II. Most of the
victims were ethnic Serbs, anti-fascists,
dissident Croats, Jews and Roma people.
Memorial relief dedicated to
victims of fascism killed in
Jasenovac Concentration Camp
in Yugoslavia during the Second
World War.
Designed by the Serbian artist, Dušan
Džamonja.
Stolpersteine in Osnabrück
Memorial stones to the victims of Nazi repression; erected by the city of Osnabruck in
2013, Kollegienwall 14/14a.
Memorial, Budapest
Memorial situated in Budapest on the
West bank of the Danube, to honour the
Jews who were killed by Hungarian fascist
militiamen of the Arrow Cross in 1944. The
victims were ordered to take off their
shoes, and were shot at the edge of the
water so that their bodies fell into the river
and were carried away. The memorial
represents the shoes left behind on the
river bank.
Kindertransport
Kindertransport (children’s transport), a
memorial by Frank Meisler which stands
outside Liverpool Street Station in London.
It commemorates the rescue mission that
took place during the nine months prior to
the outbreak of the Second World War,
when Britain took in nearly 10,000
predominantly Jewish children from
Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland,
and the Free City of Danzig. The children
were placed in British foster homes,
hostels, schools and farms. Often they
were the only members of their families
who survived the Holocaust.
Solovetsky Stone in Troitskaya Square, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Translation of the text: "To the Prisoners of the Gulag". (One of the most notorious
internment camps of Stalin‘s terror was a Solovetsky in Siberia.)
Memorial at the transit camp at
Moschendorf in Burgenland, eastern
Austria.
Memorial at the transit camp at
Moschendorf in Burgenland, eastern
Austria. The Moschendorf camp held
many displaced persons between 1945
and 1957. The inscription states it was the
door to freedom for hundreds of
thousands of prisoners of war, civilian
prisoners, and expellees.
Memorial signs commemorating the victims
of the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s, with
claims of victim counts.
The memorial is situated on the Bosnian side of the Sava river, at Gradina.
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma victims of Nazi persecution
This memorial is directed in the Tiergarten park in Berlin and was officially opened by Chancellor
Angela Merkel in 2012.
Plaque in Rome (Italy) in memory of
Romani and Sinti people
Plaque in Rome (Italy) in memory of Romani
and Sinti people died in extermination camps
in the „Porajmos” (Romani genocide) during
the Second World War.
Monument to the Memory of the Holocaust of the Romani in the site of Nazi war
crimes at Borzęcin village, Brzesko County, Poland.
The monument was designed by the Romani artist Małgorzata Mirga-Tas and was
erected in 2012.
Memorial erected in Berlin in 2008 to
commemorate homosexuals
persecuted by the Nazis.
Memorial at Natzweiler-Struthof
Concentration Camp
Memorial To the Departed erected on the site
of the Natzweiler-Struthof Concentration
Camp in Alsace.
Memorial in
the interior of
the gas
chamber at
Stutthof
concentration
camp near
Gdansk
Hill of Crosses, Šiauliai, Lithuania
The „Hill of Crosses“. Memorial list of
Lithuanians who died in Stutthof
concentration camp near Gdansk (Danzig)
during the Nazi occupation, 1939-1945.
‘’Gamp de Gurs’’
Gurs internment camp memorial plaque 1980 commemorating the victims held there
by the Fascist regime of Vichy France.
Commemorative Stamp Babi Yar
Ukrainian postage stamp, released in
2013, on the 70th anniversary of the
massacre at Babi Yar
Monument for Peace
Frankfurt an der Oder, Nuhnenstraße 40.
Today the former barracks are the police
headquarters. It commemorates those
prisoners who were repatriated to
Germany after the Second World War and
held at the Gronenfelde transit camp.
From the Stalin Cult to De-Stalinisation
The Stalin Monument and pedestal in
Prague, viewed from the West. It took five
years to construct and was unveiled in
1955, two years after Stalin‘s death. It was
destroyed on the orders of the
government in 1962, six years after Stalin‘s
crimes
had
been
denounced
by
Khrushchev.
Stalin‘s grave near the Kremlin Wall.
It was placed here after Stalin‘s body was removed from its honored place next to
Lenin‘s, on the orders of Khrushchev, in 1962.
Stalin’s Boots
Memorial at Memento Park (Szoborpark),
near Budapest
The Solovki Boulder
The Gulag Memorial in St Petersburg is made of a boulder from the Solovki camp —
the first prison camp in the Gulag system. People gather here every year on the Day of
Remembrance of Victims of the Repression (October 30)
The monument Vernichtung durch
Arbeit (Extermination through Forced
Labour).
The monument is dedicated to the forced
labourers and prisoners who died during
construction of the vast U Boat Bunker at
Bremen in North Germany in 1943.
It was created by the Bremen artist
Friedrich Stein and inaugurated in
September 1983.
‘’Topography of Terror’’, Berlin, Germany
The Topography of Terror is an outdoor and indoor history museum in Berlin, located
on the site of buildings which during the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945 were the
headquarters of the Gestapo and the SS, the principal instruments of repression during
the Nazi era.
Lidice Memorial
Memorial to the children of Lidice in the park in front of the museum, erected in 2007.
In 1942, as retribution for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich by Czech partisans,
Hitler ordered the village of Lidice, near Prague, to be razed to the ground, and its
civilian population to be murdered.
Willy Brandt’s kneeling in
respect
Memorial plaque in Warsaw,
commemorating the gesture of
apology and reconciliation by
the German Chancellor, Willy
Brandt, during his visit to
Poland in 1970.
‘’Todesstiege’’
‘Todesstiege‘ (Staircase of Death) at KZ
Mauthausen. Prisoners were subjected to
forced labour; many died from exhaustion
carrying heavy stones up the steep steps
leading from the quarry.
Jewish memorial at KL Mauthausen, near
Linz in Austria.
Memorial to Bulgarian prisoners held
at KZ Mauthausen-Gusen in Upper
Austria
Memorial for the Czechoslovakian
victims of Mauthausen Concentration
Camp
Monument in memory of Hungarian internees at KZ Mauthausen, Austria
Commemorating the visit of Pope John
Paul II, 24. 6. 1988
Mauthausen memorial: In remembrance
on the victims.
Postage stamp issued by the GDR (East Germany) in 1978 to commemorate
victims imprisoned at Mauthausen concentration camp.
GDR Memorial at KZ Mauthausen
Citation by Bertolt Brecht
O Germany, pale mother!
How have your sons arrayed you
That you sit among the peoples
A thing of scorn and fear!
The inscription at the right says: Your sons who fought and died here, are believers in a true
Germany of the future
The Road
Artwork by Ewa Kaya installed at the
Mauthausen concentration camp in
Austria in 1995. A nearby plaque has the
words: ‘The former individual was forced
into line, then dissolved to become part of
the mass. The heads of the people are
sunk into the ground to form a 7-metres
long ‘Road’. The human in the mass is
trodden down, losing individuality - no
more significant than a cobblestone in a
road.
Memorial to
Gay Victims
of the
Holocaust in
KZ
Mauthausen.
Mauthausen memorial to Yugoslav victims, author Nandor Glid, 1958
Memorial plaque for Jehovah‘s Witnesses at KZ Mauthausen, Upper Austria
International Liberation Day
Poster commemorating the 9th anniversary of
the liberation of KZ Mauthausen
Belomorkanal cigarettes
Belomorkanal (Russian: Беломорканал) was a cigarette brand made by the Uritsky
Tobacco Factory since 1932 at Leningrad, Soviet Union. The brand was introduced to
commemorate the construction of the White Sea – Baltic Canal, also known as the
Belomorkanal, in the early 1930s.Now, as a historical artefact, it is an ‚accidental‘
commemoration of thos who suffered and died as forced labourers building the canal.
A cigar case made by Nikolai Andreevich Semenov, while he was a prisoner
A cigar-case made out of Perspex, made by Nikolai Andreevich Semenov (1906-1996) while he was
a prisoner in the Special Prison No. 16 of the MGB SSSR OKB [Ministry of State Security of the
USSR Joint Design Office], the Marfino “sharashka” [a sharashka was a research and development
office employing prisoners], near Moscow, in 1946. N.A. Semenov made the cigar-case as a New
Year present for his son. He put a home-made greetings card inside and sent it as a parcel. N.A.
Semenov gave the cigar-case to the Research and Information Centre “Memorial” (St. Petersburg)
in 1992.
A Souvenir of Internment
A bed board from a camp barracks of the SibLag (Gulag in Siberia), with the inscription
“Zdes’ sidel sledstvie 6 m Mel’chakov Petr” [“Here was imprisoned under investigation
for 6 months Petr Mel’chakov”]. It was found by an inhabitant of the Miliutino
Settlement, in Iurga Region, Kemerovo oblast’, during earthworks. It is kept in the Iurga
Municipal Local History Museum. (Photograph 4 July 2005).
Dear Mum! Remember your daughter, who is suffering, separated from you and
from her Country. Lida
Greetings card embroidered on fabric. It is the work of Political Prisoner, Lidija Graudinaite.
Dubravlag (Pot’ma, Mordovia). 1949. In the top right-hand corner is a symbolic representation of a
red-green and yellow panel (the banned colours of the National Flag of Lithuania) surrounded by
a ribbon of mourning. In the centre is a text in Lithuanian: "Brangi Mamyte! Prisimink kenčiančią
be Tavęs ir Tėvynės. Lida." ["Dear Mum! Remember your daughter, who is suffering, separated
from you and from her Country. Lida"]. The card is kept in the Museum of Exile and Resistance
(Kaunas, Lithuania).
Secret Note
A “ksiva” (secret note) containing a
chronicle for 1985 of camp VS 389/36
(village of Kuchino in the Chusovskii
region of Perm oblast’), compiled by
political prisoner Rostislav Borisovich
Evdokimov (born 1950). After several
unsuccessful attempts to smuggle it out
of the camp, Evdokimov, in spring 1986,
placed the note in a special capsule and
put in a hiding place inside the camp. In
1992, during a reunion of former
prisoners in Perm, Evdokimov removed
the capsule from the hiding place and
gave it to the museum of the Research
and Information Centre “Memorial” (St
Petersburg).
Stalin Mosaic
A mosaic portrait of I. Stalin created in 1936
by Aleksei Feodosevich Vangengeim (18811937), a prisoner of the Solovetskii Camp, as a
present to his daughter Eleonora. The portrait
turned out to be the last present received by
the family from their father, who was shot on
3 November 1937.
In 2004 Eleonora Alekseevna Vangengeim
(born 1930) gave the portrait to the Museum
of the Research and Information Centre
“Memorial” (St Petersburg).
Execution: Babi Yar
A painting by Felix Lembersky, ca. 1944-1952. Oil on canvas. It commemorates the
massacre of Jews and other victims near Kiev in 1943, during the Nazi occupation of
Ukraine.
Remembering Holocaust Theatre
A painting by the American artist, Stefan Krikl,
shown at an exhibition Holocaust Theatre in
2009. It shows a rehearsal for a production of
Hamlet at Terezin (Theresienstadt) during
WWII. To amuse themselves and boost morale
of staff, concentration camp commandants
staged plays in the camps, often using famous
stage actors to perform for them; this parody
of Hamlet was popular at Terezin.
A performance of the opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis at Trieste in Italy, 2012
The opera was composed by Viktor Ullmann with a libretto by Peter Kien while they
were interned in the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt (Terezín) around 1943.
The Nazis did not allow it to be performed there. Ullmann was transported to the death
camps, where he died.
Remembrance through dissent
In the 1920s in the USSR, Varlam
Shalamov joined a group supporting
Stalin‘s rival Leon Trotsky. On February 19,
1929, Shalamov was arrested and
sentenced to solitary confinement in
Butyrskaya prison. He was later served
three years of ‚correctional labour‘ in the
town
of
Vizhaikha,
convicted
of
distributing the "Letters to the Party
Congress" known as Lenin's Testament,
which were critical of Joseph Stalin, and of
participating in a demonstration marking
the tenth anniversary of the Soviet
revolution with the slogan "Down with
Stalin„
Ernst Thälmann (16 April 1886 – 18 August
1944)
Ernst Thälmann was the leader of the
Communist Party of Germany (KPD)
during much of the Weimar Republic. He
was arrested by the Gestapo in 1933 and
held in solitary confinement for eleven
years, before being shot in Buchenwald on
Adolf Hitler's orders in 1944. During the
Spanish Civil War, several units of German
republican volunteers (most notably the
Thälmann Battalion of the International
Brigades) were named in his honor.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
The dissident author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
was imprisoned by the Soviet regime in 1945
for ‚making derogatory remarks about Stalin‘.
He was held in the Gulag until 1956. His novel
was published in 1962, at a time when the
new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, was
allowing the truth about Stalin‘s tregime to be
acknowledged.
The Church of the Nativity at Magadan in the Russian Far East serves local Roman
Catholics, many of whom survived Joseph Stalin's forced labor camps set up in the
1930s, 1940s and 1950s to exploit gold in Kolyma's harsh subarctic climate
Today the church stands both as a monument to the millions who died or suffered in the camps
and as a source of inspiration for the local population. The church was built largely through the
efforts of Father Michael Shields of Anchorage, Alaska, who went to Magadan in 1994 specifically
to care for those who had suffered in the camps. There are close contacts between Magadan and
Anchorage, its twin city.
Käthe Kollwitz: The Grieving Parents
Kathe Kollwitz, from East Prussia, became a famous artist in Weimar Germany. In 1914
her young son, Peter, was killed in battle at the very beginning of the First World War.
Much of her art was in memory of Peter. Grieving Parents now stands in Diksmuide,
West Flanders, in Belgium.
Changing attitudes to public commemoration
Activists removing the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky from its prominent place in Moscow
next to the KGB offices during the period of glasnost (openness) in Russia under
Mikhail ,Gorbachev. Dzerzhinsky founded the forerunner of the KGB under Lenin and
helped to establish the patterns of Soviet repression.
Russia's Gulag Museum Shuts Doors Amid Mounting State Pressure
A newspaper headline about the controversy over threats to close down a Russian
museum commemorating the prison camps of the Gulag
Offensive pig farm likely to remain on Roma Holocaust memorial site
A newspaper headline about the controversy over the site of the former Lety
concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, which is now occupied by a commercial pig
farm. Campaigners believe the farm should be removed to enable the place to become
a site of remembrance’
This collection is part of the unit
“Internment without a trial:
Examples from the Nazi and Soviet
regimes”
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