Events

‘Machines roar, needle drags the thread,

Sharp knife shines, cuts in two and stabs.’

With a description of a noisy and frantic environment, Halina Golczowa paints a complex picture of the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp in her poem ‘The Night Shift’ from 1942/43. A phrenetic movement of female workers, the machinery and sewing materials is the background against which the poet and former forced labourer understands the condition of the profound use of the murderous apparatus of Nazism.

Dominique Hurth is presenting a two-part artistic intervention in the weaving mill in the memorial's former ‘Industriehof’, titled after an excerpt from Golczowa's poem. The artist examines the textile history of the women's concentration camp, which has hardly been researched to date. A preamble to the project will be on display in two halls of the Mechanical Weaving Mill from May onwards to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the women's concentration camp. 

The main exhibition opens on 24 August at 3 pm. In autumn, the exhibition will be accompanied by an extensive programme of events at the Ravensbrück Memorial and Berlin.

The individual elements of the accompanying programme will provide the impetus for an interdisciplinary exchange between those invited and the artist in various formats such as lectures, open discussion rounds and lectureships. 

The programme examines five themes (from the premises to the uniforms) in their material, social and historical aspects, so that the role and legacy of forced labour in Ravensbrück can be viewed attentively and in a new light.

Venue: House at the Wannsee Conference, Berlin

Topic: The warden's uniform: forgery, copy or original

With: Dr Simone Erpel, Historian & Susanne Buch, Textile Restorer

Venue

House of the Wannsee Conference - a memorial and educational site

Am Großen Wannsee 56-58

14109 Berlin