From Auschwitz to the Harz

Sinti and Roma in the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp

Exhibition at the FLOHBURG | The Nordhausen Museum

Opening on 6 July at 7 pm

From 7 July to 27 August 2023, the FLOHBURG | The Nordhausen Museum is showing the exhibition "From Auschwitz to the Harz. Sinti and Roma in the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp". In August 1944, the SS dissolved the "Zigeuner-Familienlager" ("Gypsy family camp") in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and killed most of its inmates in the gas chambers. Only about 3000 men and women remained alive. The SS transferred most of the male prisoners to the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, which thus became the central place of detention for Sinti and Roma throughout Germany in the final phase of the war. There they were to perform forced labour for the "Endsieg" ("ultimate victory").

The exhibition is dedicated to this long-neglected topic in German society and remembrance culture. But the continuing discrimination against the Sinti and Roma began long before their persecution, deportation and murder under National Socialism, and it continues beyond the end of the war to this day. "From Auschwitz to the Harz" therefore not only deals with the horrific everyday life in the concentration camps Auschwitz and Mittelbau-Dora, but also with the beginnings of the social exclusion of Sinti and Roma before 1933 and the long and often futile struggle of concentration camp survivors for recognition after 1945.