The multimedial and interactive permanent exhibition "What does that have to do with me?" at the MARCHIVUM recounts the historical development in Mannheim during the Nazi dictatorship. For many years, the Mannheim City Archive has made it its mission to commemorate National Socialism and its victims. By naming a seminar room after Alfred Landecker, his fate is also being commemorated. Landecker, for whom the Foundation is named, was a citizen of Mannheim and exemplifies many German-Jewish biographies during the Nazi regime. He was taken from his home by the Gestapo and deported to Izbica, a ghetto in occupied Poland. What happened to him afterwards is unclear. The Izbica ghetto was a transit station to the Belzec and Sobibor extermination camps.
What changes when a democracy is replaced by a dictatorship? And how does democracy succeed afterwards?
The exhibition "What does this have to do with me?" asks questions about the how and why of our own history in order to develop an understanding of the fact that our liberal-democratic fundamental order cannot be taken for granted. It must always be defended against anti-democratic tendencies.
The permanent multimedia exhibition on Mannheim's Nazi era uses various media installations to focus on enforced social conformity, the burning of books and shows the individual fates of perpetrators and victims.
The murdered victims of the Shoa are commemorated in a separate room. Digital timelines and in-depth stations in all of the exhibition chapters help to place the historical events in their context. The seminar room named after Alfred Landecker is available for school classes and other interested groups who want to discuss these issues in greater depth.
The exhibition at the NS Documentation Centre is sponsored by the Alfred Landecker Foundation, among others. The funding is aimed at strengthening the local confrontation with National Socialism and, with the Documentation Centre in particular, supporting a place that pursues target-group-specific and contemporary approaches to storytelling and can also generate transregional appeal.
More about the National Socialist Documentation Centre in the MARCHIVUM here.
