On November 6 and 7, 2025, numerous experts and interested parties from more than ten countries gathered at the NS Documentation Centre in Cologne. The conference continued the international event format Subaltern Memories. We developed the programme in collaboration with the European Observatory on Memories (EUROM) at the University of Barcelona, the organisation Catalonia International and the NS Documentation Centre.
For the first time, a scientific conference was held to examine how people labelled as »asocials« and »career criminals« were persecuted in the territories occupied by the Wehrmacht and other fascist states. This policy of persecution during the Second World War has been scarcely researched to date for territories outside the former German Reich.
The presentations provided initial findings based on examples from Northern, Eastern, Western and Southern Europe. Both the individual contributions and the discussions can be viewed online. On the first day of the conference, there was also an evening event (in German) that dealt with current developments in the culture of remembrance: https://www.youtube.com/live/lHVDBniBmns?si=XTutmkfLxDXQ0RbS
The second day of the conference was divided into three sections, which analysed the complex practices of violence and terror and addressed the lack of remembrance of them: https://www.youtube.com/live/QU5UC3seqPQ?si=Q1IMYD8ixMkZFGiV The sessions were conducted primarily in English.
The conference was directly linked to the exhibition »The Disavowed: Victims of National Socialism, 1933–1945–Today«. As curators, we also gave a guided tour of the exhibition on Thursday and explored the subchapter »Europe under German Occupation«, which presents examples from different parts of Europe.
By Oliver Gaida und Dr. Ulrich Baumann, research associates at the Foundation
Das deutsche Militär heißt ab 1935 Wehrmacht. Bis 1945 schwören insgesamt 17 Millionen Soldaten ihren unbedingten Gehorsam auf die Person Adolf Hitlers. Die Wehrmacht überfällt und besetzt fast alle Länder Europas und verübt zahlreiche Kriegsverbrechen: Sie brennt ganze Orte nieder und führt im Osten einen Vernichtungskrieg gegen Jüdinnen und Juden, Sinti und Roma sowie die weitere Bevölkerung. Erst in den 1990er Jahren findet eine kontroverse Auseinandersetzung mit den Verbrechen der Wehrmacht statt.