"Ein Tatort: Bergen-Belsen"

In the organizer's words:

The traveling exhibition "A Crime Scene: Bergen-Belsen" can be seen from June 4 to Thursday, July 3, 2025 at the Volkshochschule Hannover. It deals with the conditions in the National Socialist concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.

Bergen-Belsen was a prisoner of war camp and a concentration camp. More than 70,000 people died there from hunger, disease and abuse. Including people who were brought to Bergen-Belsen from Hanover. Survivors later reported on the violence and crimes.

This exhibition asks: What were the reasons for building and running such a camp? Who took part in the crimes? Who was responsible? What did the perpetrators want? What did they think? What were they convinced of?

The traveling exhibition "A Crime Scene: Bergen-Belsen" is aimed at anyone who wants to find out more about the crimes committed in the Bergen-Belsen camp: People from all over society and with different needs. That is why the exhibition is designed for everyone.

To ensure that everyone can understand the exhibition, the texts are available in several versions: German simple language for reading, English simple language for reading and German sign language.

The presentation of the exhibition in Hanover is a cooperation between the ZeitZentrum Zivilcourage, the Hanover Adult Education Center, the Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation and the Bergen-Belsen Memorial.

The opening of the exhibition will take place on Wednesday, June 4, 2025 at 6 pm in the foyer of the VHS Hannover. Elke Gryglewski, Managing Director of the Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation, and Janine Doerry, the curator, will be part of this event. The speeches at the memorial event will be translated into German sign language.

Accompanying program

12.06.| 19:30 | Lecture + panel discussion | Sprengel Museum
80 years after liberation - coming to terms with and remembering National Socialism as tasks for a learning democracy
Keynote speech by Elke Gryglewski: The role of (state) research on National Socialism for the culture of remembrance. Followed by a panel discussion with Elke Gryglewski, Jens Binner, Lu Seegers and Malte Thießen. The event is part of the annual conference of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen.

27.06.| 18:00 | Book launch | ZeitZentrum Zivilcourage
"Concentration camps as societies" - book presentation with discussion
The Nazi concentration camps were social spaces with more parallels to civil society than is often assumed. How were these camp societies structured? What scope for action did the prisoners have under the conditions of coercion and violence? The editors Michael Becker, Dennis Bock and Elissa Mailänder address these questions in their reading. They talk about this with the authors Meike Sophie Baader and Wiebke Hiemesch.