The international traveling exhibition of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation will come to Dortmund this spring after the inauguration in the Jewish Museum in Berlin and a presentation in Moscow. This is the last German venue before the exhibition goes abroad. German Federal President Joachim Gauck has assumed patronage of the show.

As from 18 March 2012, the Regional Authority of Westphalia-Lippe and Dortmund City Council will present the “Forced Labor” exhibition at the LWL Zollern Colliery Industrial Museum – a place where forced laborers were also exploited during World War II. “We are very proud of being able to get this high-calibre exhibition to come to Dortmund,” explained LWL’s Museum Director Dr. Ulrike Gilhaus.

The presented exhibits and photographs allow an insight into the racially defined relationship between the Germans and the forced laborers – with all scope of action available to the people. And they show that the forced labor was part of the racist social order of the Nazi state from the very start: The propagated “People’s Community” (Volksgemeinschaft) and the forced labor of the excluded – both belonged together.

Over 60 representative case histories form the core of the exhibition. The chronologically structured exhibition establishes many connections to cities and industries of Westphalia and the Ruhr Region and refers to specific examples of forced labor in the Dortmund area. Lectures, excursions and other events will deepen the subject.