Detail

In early May 2024, the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation opened the Museum of Forced Labor under National Socialism in the former Gauforum in Weimar. The museum is the Foundation’s third institution for historical and political education dedicated to learning about the history of Nazi crimes in central locations in Weimar’s city centre.

The museum covers the history of forced labour under under the Nazis in a broad historical and thematic context: from the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 to the contemporary reparations debates, from the exploitation of forced labourers in Europe under German occupation to their deportation by the millions to the German Reich. The pan-European dimensions of Nazi forced labour are brought to life for visitors in over 60 case studies, documented and, above all, photographed.

The permanent exhibition at the Museum of Forced Labor under National Socialism focuses on the problematic history of the relationship between Germans and forced labourers. It shows different attitudes and sheds light on the room for manoeuvre of those involved. Using many examples, the exhibition explains what forced labour meant and where it took place: for example, in the first concentration camps in the 1930s, in the Jewish ghettos in occupied Poland, in the workshop around the corner, at BMW in Munich Allach, or in the production of rockets in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Among other things, the exhibitions describes the fate of Polish forced labourers in agriculture, Russian prisoners of war in the Arctic Circle in Norway, Italian military internees in Kahla, and pregnant Russian, Ukrainian and Polish women who were forced to have abortions or whose babies died as a result of systematic neglect.

The Museum of Forced Labor under National Socialism is located in the south wing of the former Gauforum in Weimar, the only Nazi Gauforum in Germany to be nearly completed. According to Nazi plans, this part of building was intended to become the official residence of the Thuringian Nazi Party leader, Fritz Sauckel. From March 1942, Sauckel, in his additional capacity as Plenipotentiary General for the Deployment of Labour (GBA), was responsible for the deportation of more than 7.5 million forced labourers to the German Reich from all over Europe. For this, he was sentenced to death at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. The Gauforum, with its tower visible from afar, would have been the centre of his power. However, the monumental building complex was not completed and occupied until after the war, and has since been used in a variety of ways.