Germany / Frankfurt am Main

Norbert Wollheim Memorial

The Norbert Wollheim Memorial was opened in 2008 on the site of the former I.G. Farben trust in Frankfurt am Main. It remembers the prisoners of the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp who had to conduct forced labour for I.G. Farben. Norbert Wollheim was a survivor of this concentration camp who successfully fought for restitution for the former forced labourers in post-war years.

History

The I.G. Farben trust (»Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG«) was established in 1925 by the merger of several chemical companies including Hoechst, BASF and Bayer. As a result the I.G. Farben became one of the world's biggest corporations. In 1928 the I.G. Farben Building, a modern, massive Bauhaus-style building was erected as company headquarters in the Frankfurt Westend. Following the National Socialist's rise to power the new government and the company got closer to each other. I.G. Farben manufactured many products crucial to German war efforts and took part in Germany's military built-up. After the attack on Poland and the beginning of World War II the links with the National Socialist leadership got even closer: In April 1941 I.G. Farben established the I.G. Auschwitz, a chemical factory near the concentration camp. It was planned to become the largest chemical plant in Eastern Europe. Moreover, the company opened a company-owned concentration camp in Auschwitz (Polish: Oświęcim). The Buna/Monowitz camp (also called Auschwitz III) was mainly for forced labourers who had to work on the construction site for the I.G. Auschwitz chemical factory. In winter 1944 about 10,000 people were imprisoned in the Buna/Monowitz camp. With the advance of the Red Army the SS evacuated the camp. Thousands of prisoners were forced on so-called death marches. About 850 sick and feeble prisoners remained in Monowitz. The were liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945.

Frankfurt am Main, o.D., The former I.G.-Farben Building, Fritz Bauer Institut, Werner Lott

Frankfurt am Main, 2009, Memorial park, Fritz Bauer Institut, Werner Lott

Victims

After the Buna/Monowitz camp was established in October 1942, it was mainly Jewish prisoners who had to conduct forced labour on the construction site for the I.G. Auschwitz chemical factory. A first transport of Jews arrived on October 27, 1942 from Westerbork in Holland. Only 200 men were selected as fit for work by the SS, all others were murdered with poison gas in the gas chambers of the Auschwitz II Birkenau extermination camp. The number of Jewish forced labourers in the Buna/Monowitz camp grew rapidly and steadily, they came from almost every European country. In summer 1944 occupancy levels reached a peak of 11,000 prisoners. Except for approximately 20 Polish women, forced into prostitution with other prisoners by the SS, all prisoners of the camp were male. The death toll can only be estimated, since all prisoner's records had been destroyed by the SS and I.G. Farben employees before the end of war. 10,000 to 30,000 people died on the effects of forced labour. Most prisoners died in accidents on the building site, from hunger and emaciation, from hard work and diseases. Moreover, the SS selected prisoners who were too weak for work and murdered them in the gas chambers of Birkenau.

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 I.G. Farben continued producing until 1945. After the occupation of Germany the Allies started to smash the company. Since the I.G. Farben played a decisive role in the German arms production, the separation of the company was supposed to guarantee that Germany wouldn't be able to re-arm again. In fact, however, the trust was only dissolved from 1949 onwards: capital and production facilities returned to the original companies. They evolved into the three largest chemical companies in West Germany: Bayer, BASF and Hoechst. The legal successor for I.G. Farben became the newly established »I.G. Farben in Liquidation«. Several members of the company's senior management stood trial in the Nuremberg Trials of 1947/48, accused of »looting« and »enslavement«. Most of the them were acquitted, some were sentenced to several years in prison. None of the forced labourers received any restitution. This only changed when Norbert Wollheim, who had to conduct forced labour for I.G. Auschwitz from 1943 to 1943, filed a suite for the repayment of his wages and for compensation. In 1957 the »I.G. Farben i.L.« made a one-off payment of 27 million Deutschmarks to the Jewish Claims Conference.
The I.G. Farben Building in Frankfurt am Main served as headquarters for the American troops from 1952 until their withdrawal in 1995. In 2001 the University of Frankfurt opened a humanities department within the building. Survivors of the I.G. Auschwitz and university students initiated the creation of the Wollheim Memorial, which opened in 2008. Several photo panels in the Grüneburgpark refer to the fate of the forced labourers. In a small pavilion designed by the artist Heiner Blum videos of eye witnesses are shown. The outside of the pavilion is labelled with Norbert Wollheim's prison number, inside is a quote by Norbert Wollheim: »Wir sind gerettet, aber wir sind nicht befreit« (English: »We are saved but we are not freed«).

Frankfurt am Main, 2009, Exhibition pavilion, Fritz Bauer Institut, Werner Lott

Auschwitz, o.D., View of the Monowitz-Buna factory, Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau

Contact

http://www.wollheim-memorial.de

info@fritz-bauer-institut.de

+49 (0)69 798 322 40

Grüneburgplatz 1
60323 Frankfurt am Main

Frankfurt am Main, 2009, Commemorative plaque in front of the former company headquarters, Fritz Bauer Institut, Werner Lott

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