Against forgetting: exhibition about atrocities opened in Hagen”

Against forgetting: exhibition about atrocities opened in Hagen”

The exhibition “Against Forgetting” opened on May 13, 2025, which deals with the atrocities committed by the authorities during the Nazi dictatorship in Hagen. The initiative was supported by the Department of Community Psychology at the FernUniversität Hagen through accompanying scientific research. The exhibition runs until June 13th and can be viewed in the University Library of the FernUniversität in Hagen. The organizer is a cooperation between Caritas, the health department of the city of Hagen and the Hagen historical association.

People with disabilities and students from Dortmund University of Applied Sciences play an active role in this project. The responsibility of urban institutions during the Nazi regime is examined and the fundamental grievances are dealt with. The exhibition aims to inform the public about these often ignored historical connections and to carry out historical remembrance work. FernUniversität Hagen reports that this memorial work is urgently needed, as Hagen has so far lacked an appropriate reminder of the injustice that has happened to people with disabilities.

Coming to terms with the past

Caritas initiated the project to deal with the atrocities committed during the Nazi regime, and there was project funding from “Aktion Mensch”. The official start of the project took place on February 20th at the Hagen City Health Department. Further contact information, if anyone interested would like to find out more about the project, is available from Friedrich Schmidt, head of the social psychiatric service.

The list of affected groups is long and includes not only people with disabilities, but also homosexuals, homeless people and Sinti and Roma. In Hagen, the health department began hereditary biological recordings of the population in 1933. This collection covered a wide range of personal data that was used to carry out atrocities such as forced sterilization and the killing of patients as part of Nazi euthanasia.

Memorials and places of remembrance

The seriousness of the crimes committed is made clear by the existing files in the city archives. The health department has a list of almost 1,000 “hereditary health files” that document forced sterilizations, and the files of the hereditary health court include around 5,500 individual case files. To date, many of those affected and their families have not received an adequate apology or recognition of their suffering, which underlines the need for the exhibition and the associated processing.

The “Forgotten Victims” were already discussed in a book in 2018 in which 303 victims of Nazi euthanasia were identified. This discourse about Nazi history and the memory of it is also important in the context of the list of memorial sites for the victims of National Socialism, which points out that there is a lack of corresponding memorial sites in many cities, including Hagen. In Hagen, the positive developments and the necessary steps towards a culture of remembrance are being promoted through the exhibition “Against Forgetting”. Double juniper states that coming to terms with it is fundamental for school educational work and society as a whole in order to learn the lessons from history.