Organisation: Christiane Hess, Julia Hoerath, Dominique Schroeder and Kim Wuenschmann In cooperation with: Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrueck Memorial Museum and Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung (TU Berlin)

Date: 12.11.2008-16.11.2008 Location: Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrueck Memorial Museum

Due date for applications: 31 August 2008

The “15. Workshop on the History of the Nazi Concentration Camps” will take place from the 12 until the 16 of November 2008 in the memorial sites of Ravensbrueck and Sachsenhausen (Brandenburg, Germany). Both conference venues have a most eventful and varied history shaped by the various types of camps established here during the Third Reich and the differently orientated work of the memorial site museums before and after Germany’s reunification. By focussing on the question of continuities and breaks, this year’s workshop wants to deal with the development and structure of the Nazi concentration camps and the changing memory of these places of terror.

The planned conference stands in the tradition of the annual “Workshops on the History of the Nazi Concentration Camps” first held in 1994. In changing constellations the participants themselves are responsible for the organisation of these workshops. By now an internationally established forum, the workshop gives young scholars the valuable opportunity to present and discuss their work with a learned community of peers in a critical but supportive environment.

The conference focuses on three key aspects:

(1) The development, structure and changing functions of the concentration camp system over the 12-year period of the Third Reich.
(2) The different actors in the camps’ context of violence with their genuine/respective experiences, motives and possible modes of action and behaviour.
(3) The various forms of individual and collective reception and interpretation of the crimes committed in the camps.

(1) The first thematic section asks for continuities and breaks in the structural history and the development of the system of the Nazi concentration camps. From the improvised detention centres of varied location, control and institutional set-up, swiftly established in the first months after Hitler’s seizure of power, to the formation of the concentration camp-SS and their development to a widely ramified system of Haupt- and Nebenlager, the concentration camps have been sites of imprisonment, forced labour, torture and death for millions of people. Researches have traditionally tried to analyse and understand the concentration camp system through periodisations. Re-evaluated against the background of recent results, can the developmental leaps in the history of the concentration camps really be understood as qualitative changes in function, through which a former purpose was replaced by a new? Or can we not rather detect an accumulation of functions and purposes caused by the ever-growing demands put to the concentration camp system through which new function added to older ones without replacing them? What role did the early camps of 1933/34 play for the formation of the later system?
(2) By shifting the perspective onto the actors in the concentration camps’ context of violence it is possible to also question developments beyond the structural and organisational history for continuities and breaks. As perpetrators, victims or bystanders, individuals or groups were related to the camps in the most different ways; as prisoners they had to fight for their survival in a forced community imposed by the SS. What kind of information about their specific perceptions, motives and modus operandi can we gain when dealing with perpetrators, victims and bystanders? Can we reach new findings when we make the experience of the victims the focus of our research rather than the institutional development of the camp system? And how, on the other hand, does the narrative change if the research interest lies on the course of persecution and imprisonment of different groups of victims? Finally, we would like to analyse the relationship between the camps and their local environments and its changes over time.
(3) After their dissolution or liberation the former concentration camps were oftentimes made invisible and forgotten. It was only after the survivors took the initiative, sometimes against local protesters, that the former camps were remodelled into memorial sites. The historical sites of Nazi crimes, today situated in different countries, gradually became essential elements of a national and by now also European remembrance culture and memorial practice. By studying the former camp sites’ post-war history we can learn how a society comes to terms with its past and which moral and political imperatives it deduces for the future. The different forms of dealing with the Nazi past, on both a state-official and on a civil-societal level, are again subject to/subordinated to changes in function and signification.

Both conference venues with their varied histories stimulate the concretisation of the above outlined questions. They confront us with the historical legacy of the camps Oranienburg, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrueck and Uckermark and they encourage debates about the conception of the different memorial sites that existed and exist here, the process of revision and remake they underwent and the realisation of permanent and special themed exhibitions on the spot. Guided tours and discussions with the responsible historians and pedagogues are also part of the workshop’s programme. Conference papers will be 20 minutes long and have the character of an impulse lecture followed by a discussion. The sessions should have an informal workshop character with the discussions of open question in the foreground. Participants should be present during the whole conference to enable a profound and far-reaching exchange.

The Call for Participation is addressed to advanced graduate students as well as to PhD students who work on the history of the Nazi concentration camps and their memory. We explicitly invite international students to apply. The workshop’s languages are German and English.

We ask those wishing to participate in the conference to submit an statement of motivation (one page) and a short biography by Email to the conference organisers by 31 August 2008:

orgateam.workshop2008@googlemail.com

Chosen participants will be notified until mid September 2008. We try to reimburse reasonable travel costs and provide accommodation.

The Organisation Team:
Christiane Hess, Julia Hoerath, Dominique Schroeder and Kim Wuenschmann

Conference Programme:
Mittwoch, 12. November 2008
bis 17:00 Anreise (Stadthotel Oranienburg)
18:00 -19:00 Abendessen (Hotel)
19:00 -20:00 Begruessung und Vorstellung
20:00 -21:30 Grussworte und Eroeffnungsvortrag mit anschließender Diskussion: Angefragt: Dr. Carina Baganz (ZfA, TU Berlin)

Donnerstag, 13. November 2008
8:00 - 9:00 Bustransfer zur Mahn- und Gedenkstaette Ravensbrueck
9:00 - 19:00 Mahn- und Gedenkstaette Ravensbrueck
9:00 - 13:00 Panel I (1. Lagersystem) - Moderation: Kim Wuenschmann
9:00 - 10:00 Julia Hoerath (Birkbeck College, London) - Die Anfaenge sozialhygienischer Verfolgung
10:00 - 11:00 Sven Langhammer (Stiftung Gedenkstaetten Sachsen-Anhalt) - Die polizeiliche Vorbeugungshaft in Preussen von 1933-1936/37 11:00 - 11:30 Kaffeepause
11:30 - 12:30 Roman Froehlich (OSI FU, Berlin) - Beschaeftigung von Zwangsarbeitern im Heinkel-Konzern
12:30 - 13:00 Panel I: Resuemee und Diskussion der Vortraege 1-3
13:00 - 14:00 Mittagessen in der Gedenkstaette
14:00 - 17:30 Begruessung und Erkundung der KZ-Gedenkstaette Ravensbrueckmit der Leiterin Dr. Insa Eschebach
17.30 - 18.00 Kaffeepause
18:00 - 19:30 Diskussion der Gedenkstaettenkonzeption mit Dr. Insa Eschebach
19:30 - 20:30 Bustransfer zum Stadthotel Oranienburg
Ab 20:30 Abendessen im Stadthotel Oranienburg

Freitag, 14. November 2008
9:00 - 21:00 Tagungshotel
9:00 - 13:00 Panel II (2. Taeter, Opfer, Zuschauer) - Moderation: Julia Hoerath
9:00 - 10:00 Christopher Dillon (Birkbeck College, London) - The DachauSS and the locality 1933-1939
10:00 - 11:00 Paul Moore (Birkbeck College, London) - "Man hat es sich viel schlimmer vorgestellt." Continuity and Change in Propaganda on and Public Perception of the Nazi Concentration Camps, 1933-39
11:00 - 11:30 Kaffeepause
11:30 - 12:30 Helen Whatmore (University College, London) - Bystanders,Accomodation and Resistence
12:30 - 13.00 Panel II: Resuemee und Diskussion der Vortraege 4-6
13:00 - 14:00 Mittagessen
14:00 - 16:00 Panel III (3. Lagerwelt) - Moderation: Dominique Schroeder
14:00 - 15:00 Joern Wendland (Universitaet Bonn) - Die Verbildlichung des Undarstellbaren. Bildgeschichten von Haeftlingen aus nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern
15:00 - 16:00 Katarzyna Nowak (Staatliches Museum Auschwitz- Birkenau) - "Lagersprache" im KL Auschwitz
16.00 - 16.30 Kaffeepause
16:30 - 17:30 Oliver Geissler (TU Dresden) - »schoepferisches Gedächtnis.« Das verschwundene und das erfundene Lager bei Imre Kertész17:30 - 18:30 Panel III: Resuemee und Diskussion der Vortraege 7-9
18:30 - 19:30 Abendessen
19:30 - 21:00 Wahl des Organisationsteams 2009

Samstag, 15. November 2008
9:00 - 19:00 KZ-Gedenkstaette Sachsenhausen
9:00 - 9:30 Spaziergang zur KZ-Gedenkstaette Sachsenhausen
9:30 - 12:30 Besuch der Gedenkstaette und des Museums Sachsenhausen. Rundgang und Diskussion mit dem Leiter Prof. Dr. Guenter Morsch
12:30 - 13:30 Mittagessen in der Gedenkstaette
13:30 - 14:30 Diskussion der Gedenkstaettenkonzeption mit Prof. Dr. Guenter Morsch
14:30 - 19:00 Panel IV (4. Unterschiedliche Formen gesellschaftlicher Aufarbeitung) - Moderation: Christiane Hess
14:30 - 15:30 Tomaz Jardim (University of Toronto) - Early Assessments
of Nazi Criminality: American War Crimes Investigators and the Liberation of Mauthausen
15:30 - 16:00 Kaffeepause
16:00 - 17:00 Imke Hansen (Universitaet Hamburg) - Wem gehoert Auschwitz? Juedisch - Katholisch-Polnische Gedaechtnis-Konflikte um das ehemalige Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslager 1985 - 1999
17:00 - 18:00 Angefragt: Verena Paetow (Berlin)
18:00 - 19:00 Panel IV: Resuemee und Diskussion der Vortraege 10-12
19:00 - 20:00 Abendessen
20:00 - 22:00 Filmvorfuehrung mit anschliessender Diskussion

Sonntag, 4. November 2007
9:00 - 12:00 Tagungshotel
9:00 - 10:00 Resuemee incl. Ausblick und Diskussion
10:00 - 11:30 Abschlussdiskussion und Auswertungsrunde
11:30 - 12:00 Kaffeepause
ab 12:00 Abreise der TeilnehmerInnen