Why is the Topf & Sons – Builders of the Auschwitz Ovens – Place of Remembrance important to you?
This place is one of the genuine historical places in Thuringia,
in the Federal Republic of Germany.
When we talk about the crimes of the Nazi period,
we also have to talk about everyday life in the Nazi period.
And here the two come together.
Right here where I’m standing,
I have a view of Buchenwald.
That means that the oven builders always had their products within sight,
and they provided accurate engineering
for how best to turn human beings into smoke.
They knew exactly who they were doing it for,
where they were doing it,
where these ovens were being installed.
That’s why we have to talk about everyday life.
And when we talk about everyday life,
we realize the true dimensions of the Nazi era
and the Nazi crimes as everyday crimes
and as a break in our culture.
That’s why Topf & Sons is so important as a place.
And it’s good that young people occupied this place several years ago,
because it was supposed to be torn down.
A piece of our history would have disappeared,
and nothing but another supermarket would have come in its stead.
But what evolved was a Place of Remembrance,
a place we can make reference to,
a place we can work with,
but also a place with which we can pass the memory on to the coming generations.
Because sooner or later, all that will be left are the commemorative sites.
The people who witnessed the events first-hand
and can say “this is how it was” will be gone.
So the places themselves will have to speak.
For the people who suffered through it all, survived,
and warn us not to forget them.
The “never again” has to be established and re-established over and over again,
and this place is a foundation for the “never again”.
The place itself if full of remembrance work,
and that means that the exhibition has to be overseen by scholars,
and its position has to be newly staked out again and again.
It also has to be presented in such a way
that makes young people curious.
Visual habits change; listening habits change.
The facts remain the same, but how we present them is of decisive importance.
And I very much look forward to the day
when there will be another travelling exhibition.
The content of the present exhibition started as a travelling exhibition.
Here it permeates the original place of remembrance.
And now we want this place to make itself heard
and felt all over the world once again.
That’s why it’s so important to continue the scholarship
and museum education work at this place.