»Alter Schlachthof« Memorial Centre

Erinnerungsort Alter Schlachthof

Since 2016, the »Alter Schlachthof« Memorial Centre on the campus of the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences commemorates the deported Jews of Düsseldorf and its surrounding region. The cattle market of a former municipal slaughterhouse was used by the Nazis as a collection camp for Jews prior to their deportation.

History

Jews have lived in Düsseldorf already in medieval times, but it was not until the 18th century that a Jewish community established itself in the city. Their numbers were never particularly high, but the Jewish community in Düsseldorf was famous for being one of the most liberal Jewish communities in Germany. Before the First World War, Jews accounted for 3,000 of the approximately 400,000 inhabitants of the rapidly growing city. 1904 saw the opening of the New Synagogue, and between 1907 and 1912, one of the best-known leaders of Liberal Judaism, Leo Baeck (1873–1956), served the community as its rabbi.
About 5,000 Jews were living in Düsseldorf when the Nazis came to power in 1933. Soon they were gradually pushed out of public life and from 1936 on, the Nuremberg racial laws discriminated against them even further. During the November pogroms of 1938, local Nazis and their sympathizers pillaged Jewish homes, arrested 141 Jews and destroyed the New Synagogue that was demolished soon thereafter. Many Jews chose to emigrate after this outbreak of open violence.
In 1941, the Nazi leadership began mass deportations of Jews from the German Reich to ghettos and extermination sites in the occupied territories of Eastern Europe. The first transport of approximately 1,000 Jews from Düsseldorf and its surrounding region left the city on October 27, 1941 in the direction of the Łódź ghetto. Another six transports from Düsseldorf followed to Minsk, Riga, Izbica and Terezín (German: Theresienstadt). Prior to all these transports, the Jews were rounded up in the stockyard of the municipal slaughterhouse directly adjacent to the freight station of Düsseldorf-Derendorf. Here they were registered and robbed of their belongings before forced to board the trains. The victims were from all over the region of Düsseldorf including cities like Essen, Mönchengladbach, Oberhausen and Duisburg.

Düsseldorf, 2016, Cattle market hall of the former slaughterhouse houses today the university library and the memorial site, Hochschule Düsseldorf, Eric Fritsch

Düsseldorf, 2016, View of the permanent exhibition: Faces and Stories, Hochschule Düsseldorf, Eric Fritsch

Victims

Up to 6,000 Jewish men, women and children were deported in seven transports by the Nazi authorities from the Düsseldorf region to ghettos and extermination sites in occupied Eastern Europe. All of the victims had to pass through the collection camp in the slaughterhouse of Düsseldorf-Derendorf. Only a handful of them survived the Holocaust.

The entry to power of the National Socialists in 1933 heralded the state persecution of opponents of the regime, Jews, Roma – who were classed as »gypsies« -, the sick and many other groups. For the first time, anti-semitism became part of the government policy of a modern state and the persecution of all groups was progressively heightened. The process was characterised by the interplay between state regulation, violence from supporters of the regime and rabble-rousing propaganda from the press. The acts of terror against the Jews in November 1938 (»The Night of the Broken Glass«), culminating in around one hundred deaths, marked the prelude to the complete exclusion and murder of the Jewish minority. With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, large parts of Europe fell under German control. In Eastern Europe in particular a multi-tiered system of camps and extermination sites was established, in which the SS murdered up to six million Jews, among them around 165,000 German Jews. It is estimated that around seven million Germans lost their lives in the war, including almost 3.5 million civilians. Around 28 million residents of the occupied Soviet Union (both soldiers and civilians) and three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death. These groups are still barely commemorated in Germany. Germany came under Allied occupation in 1945 and 1949 saw the foundation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), who had very different cultures of remembrance. The GDR profiled itself as an »antifascist« state. The former concentration camps at Buchenwald, Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen became »National Memorials« and primarily documented the communist resistance during the war. In the Federal Republic, the dominant memory was initially of the victims of Allied bombing raids and those who had fled or been expelled from their homes in the former territory of the Third Reich. It was left to specific groups to remember Nazi persecution, the Holocaust or the resistance. With the exception of the war crimes trials, there was no public discussion of perpetrators or involvement in crimes. However, the situation was to change in the mid-1960s, when the statute of limitations for murder was lifted following a lengthy debate. Also during this period, memorial sites were established at former concentration camps (1965: Dachau and Neuengamme; 1966: Bergen-Belsen) and the German Resistance Memorial Centre was opened in 1968 in West Berlin. However, it was not until the 1980s that a diverse and often small-scale landscape of memory developed as the result of local initiatives. Following German unification in 1990, a national memorial site concept was developed and there was a major review of German sites of memory. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin was inaugurated in 2005. The Topography of Terror, a comprehensive documentation of National Socialist crimes and perpetrators, has opened with a new centre in May 2010; the documentation centre »Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation« followed suit in 2021. In the meantime, central memorials in Berlin have been erected to commemorate further groups of Nazi victims as well: the murdered Sinti and Roma, the patients murdered in the context of the Nazi’s »Euthanasia« killings and the persecuted homosexuals. The German victims of National Socialist terror in the former Eastern territories of the Third Reich were forgotten by both German states after the end of the war. For decades, memory of these victims was only preserved by West German associations for Germans born in these territories and it mainly excluded the period from 1933 to 1945.

Remembrance

The municipal slaughterhouse in Düsseldorf-Derendorf opened in 1899 and remained in use up until 2002. Afterwards, the historical premises remained deserted, while only a small plaque commemorated the victims of the deportations. In February 2016 the new Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences campus opened on the site of the former abattoir. Accorded conservation status, the former cattle market hall accommodates the Campus IT department and the University library. What was once the cattle market reception area is now the »Alter Schlachthof« Memorial Centre, designed and implemented by University staff and students.
Located at the historical site, the permanent exhibition documents the crimes committed and reconstructs life stories. The digital archive shows numerous historical documents as well as biographical details and photographs of victims, perpetrators and profiteers. The centre also emphasises the significance of the remaining Holocaust survivors and addresses discussions on the aftermath of the Nazi dictatorship.
An educational programme, developed together with the University’s Centre for Research in Right-wing Extremism/Neonazism, complements the exhibition. Guided tours, workshops, readings and lectures provide the narrative for the historic site and the people of the region who were deported to ghettos and extermination camps. Also addressed are contemporary issues such as racism, antisemitism, right-wing extremism, social exclusion and the treatment of minorities.

Düsseldorf, 2016, Memorial plaque from the 1980s at the entrance to the campus area, Joachim Schröder

Düsseldorf, 2016, Digital archives, Hochschule Düsseldorf, Eric Fritsch

Possibilities

Permanent exhibition, digital archives, public guided tours, workshops, lectures

Open

Monday to Friday: 8.00 a.m. to 8.00 p.m.
Saturday: 11.00 a.m. to 7.00 p.m.
Closed on Sundays and on holidays

Contact

http://www.erinnerungsort-duesseldorf.de

info@erinnerungsort-duesseldorf.de

+49 (0)211 435 133 70

Münsterstraße 156
40476 Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf, around 1900, View of the slaughterhouse premises, Architekten- und Ingenieurverein zu Düsseldorf: Düsseldorf und seine Bauten, Verlag L. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1904

Düsseldorf, 2016, Information console at the entrance to the memorial centre, constructed by Eicher Werkstätten, Hochschule Düsseldorf, Eric Fritsch

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