FORUM "In Gesellschaft": Befreit. Und dann? - Leben nach der Zwangsarbeit

In the organizer's words:

Returned or migrated onwards

80 years ago, in May 1945, forced laborers celebrated their long-awaited liberation. But many uncertainties remained and the physical and psychological hardships continued to weigh heavily on their lives. Most of them wanted to leave Germany as quickly as possible. However, many hometowns and villages had been destroyed, family members had been murdered or their homeland was in the sphere of influence of the Stalinist Soviet Union. As a result, many stayed in Germany for the time being or forever, while others emigrated. Even when they returned, they were often met with skepticism or even hostility. Relations with the Germans remained strained.

Forced labor was therefore over at the end of the war and yet remained a part of their lives. What moved former forced laborers even after the war? What decisions could or had to be made after the war? What consequences did forced labor have on their lives? To what extent were they able to build new lives? How did they view the Germans? How did the Germans react to their crimes?

We talk to our guests about stories and perspectives that do not reduce forced labor to the wartime period, but focus on entire life stories. "Liberated. And then?" doesn't just look back. Even today, forced labor is a story that is shared by millions of people around the world - as victims, as those responsible and as descendants. It is therefore still far too early to draw a line under it.

Our guests:

Sarah Grandke is a historian, curator and doctoral candidate at the University of Regensburg, Germany. She has held several scholarships, including at the Australian National University, Canberra and the Sydney Jewish Museum in Australia, as well as within the framework of the ERC project "Global Resettlement Regimes: Ambivalent Lessons learned from the Postwar (1945-1951)" at the University of Vienna. She also received a scholarship from the German Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland. From 2018 to 2023, Grandke was a curator at the Hamburg documentation center "denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof" on the deportations of Jews and Roma between 1933 and 1945. From 2016 to 2018, she worked at the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial and was previously a curator at the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism in an exhibition project on the history of Sinti and Roma in Bavaria.

Evelina Rudenko has carried out numerous educational projects for the Russian human rights organization "Memorial", which was dissolved in 2022, including on the fate of the so-called "Eastern workers". - Even before the end of the Soviet Union in 1990, newspaper reports told of imminent compensation payments for former forced laborers from the Soviet Union, who were referred to as "Eastern workers" in Nazi Germany. The human rights organization "Memorial", which had set itself the goal of coming to terms with Stalinist crimes, was wrongly named as the contact person and subsequently received laundry baskets of mail. This led to the creation of the "Ostarbeiter" archive with around 320,000 letters, in which the authors often reported on their time in Germany for the first time. - Evelina Rudeno now lives in Germany and is project coordinator at Memorial Zukunft e.V. on the history of Soviet forced laborers in Nazi Germany.

Ad van Liempt is a historian and journalist from the Netherlands. After a career in newspaper journalism and television (NOS-Journaal, Studio Sport, NOVA), Ad van Liempt (1949) was one of the founders of the history program "Andere Tijden". He was also editor-in-chief of numerous programs on politics and current affairs as well as the successful television series "De War". Since 1994, he has regularly published books on historical topics, particularly on the Second World War. The best known are "Kopgeld" (Bounty), "De Oorlog" (The War), "Na de Bevrijding" (After the Liberation) and "Aan de Maliebaan" (On the Maliebaan Avenue). Most recently, he published a book about the liberation entitled "1945, de Afrekening" (1945, the Reckoning). He received an honorary Nipkowschijf (the most important television award in the Netherlands) for his television work and an honorary doctorate from the University of Amsterdam for his work as an author and program designer.

Nora Hespers will moderate the discussion.

Hespers is a (sports) journalist, podcaster and author, works for WDR, ARD and Deutschlandfunk Nova, and has worked as a journalist at soccer World Cups and European Championships; she is always particularly interested in socio-political issues: She has been bringing her grandfather's story to life since 2014 with the blog and podcast series "Die Anachronistin", and her book "Mein Opa, sein Widerstand gegen die Nazis und ich" was also published by Suhrkamp in 2021.

Since 2021, the FORUM "In Gesellschaft." has been asking from ever new perspectives how we deal with the history of Nazi forced labor and what we want to derive from it for our coexistence.