KULTURSTIFTER: “WORK IN THE EXCAVATION FIELD”

Under the title “Work in the excavation field”, Marcel Beyer deals with Stalag VIII A in the KULTURSTIFTER and describes the work of the Foundation Remembrance, Education, Culture and the Meetingpoint Memory Messiaen. In a stirring article, Marcel Beyer gets to the bottom of the history of the site and places today’s memorial in the shared urban history of Görlitz and Zgorzelec.

The structures of the camp bowed to nature after the war. The forest took what was left after cover-up attempts by the fleeing Nazis in the first half of ’45 and after the barracks were demolished for material for the reconstruction of the large cities. But what remains irrevocably after the site threatened to be forgotten for the two cities of Görlitz and Zgorzelec is the memory. The memory of those who suffered and died nameless in the prisoner-of-war camp. The Foundation Remembrance, Education, Culture and the Meetingpoint Memory Messiaen are therefore tirelessly researching and cooperating with an ever-growing network of people of different origins and backgrounds to bring the former prisoner-of-war camp into the public consciousness and to make the European Centre Remembrance, Education, Culture an established educational and cultural institution in the European City of Görlitz – Zgorzelec.

“And interestingly enough, it is those born long after the end of the Second World War, after the end of the Cold War, are the children of the 21st century, for whom there is no question that working together in a multilingual group, looking at an object from different perspectives, not only enhances knowledge, but also serves one’s own imagination,” says Marcel Beyer in Kulturstifter Magazin.”

The article by Marcel Beyer can be read in “Kulturstifter – Streifzüge durch Sachsen” and is available in german bookshops everywhere.
Publishing House of Art Dresden
ISBN 978-3-86530-280-9
https://www.kdfs.de/projekte/kulturstifter