Fouilles archéologiques dans la carrière du camp de concentration de Natzweiler-Struthof

In August 2023, a team of students and amateur archaeologists excavated the remains of a forge and a hall at the Natzweiler-Struthof camp. As early as 1943, concentration camp inmates were dismantling used aircraft engines for the German aeronautics firm Junkers.

Lettres d’un travailleur forcé à sa famille

In diesen kurzen Mitteilungen gibt « Kees » einen wertvollen Einblick in das Alltagsleben des Zwangsarbeiterlagers. Als Holländer wurde er besser behandelt als die ZwangsarbeiterInnen aus Osteuropa: er konnte ins Kino gehen, sein Lohn ermöglichte es ihm, Geld an seine Familie zu senden und er erhielt Pakete mit Essen, Tabak und Bekleidung von zu Hause. Cornelis, der dieses Alltagsleben mit Sarkasmus schildert, wurde anschliessend in ein Arbeits- und Erziehungslager verbracht, in dem ZwangsarbeiterInnen wegen Ungehorsams unter schrecklichen Bedingungen inhaftiert waren. Er ist dort im Alter von 19 Jahren vermutlich an den Folgen von Misshandlungen und an Erschöpfung gestorben.

Dessiner pour mettre le quotidien à distance

In the graphic creations of the prisoners, humour and caricature express absence, nostalgia, boredom and frustration. Food, women, travel, alcohol and memories of particular pastimes are all themes that can be found drawn on the walls of the German POW (prisoner of war) camp at Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy. These drawings are just some of the many examples of artistic production that made it possible to cope with everyday life by distancing oneself from it.

Pour qu’on laissât la dégradation intacte

Directed by Ania Szczepanska for the Laténium exhibition, the film takes us to the sites of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sachsenhausen, Rathenow, Fort-Queuleu, Vandœuvre -lès-Nancy and Natzweiler-Struthof. These views, accompanied by the testimonies of former deportees turned writers, leads us into the poetics of disappearance.

Recipe book by Flora Saulnier

Flora Saulnier, a member of the French Resistance, was arrested by the Gestapo on 23.12.1943. Between May 1944 and the end of the war, she was interned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany. During her stay, she collected dozens of cooking recipes that were certainly not intended to be tried out there. Rather, they show that sharing the values and emotions associated with the pleasure of eating was, for these deported women, a way of fighting dehumanisation. This notebook also shows the importance of keeping a record of the friendships built up in the camps, once the experience has become a shared memory. The recipe notebook has been deposited in the Fonds de l’Association nationale des Déportées et Internées de la Résistance (ADIR).