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Bochum has a vibrant culture of remembrance. As co-founder and for several years chairwoman of the „Remembering for the Future“ association, I have a lot in common with this history. The question that keeps coming back to me – what motivates people to stand up for human rights – is no less topical. I am therefore all the more pleased that we have been able to realise this project. After a year of intensive preparations, the Fritz Bauer Library with Stories of Resistance and Survival was launched with an event in Bochum. In the spirit of the jurist Fritz Bauer, who brought Auschwitz, the crimes of the Nazi judiciary, the Wehrmacht and Nazi medicine to justice, we are thus opening up new paths for the culture of remembrance „In the fight for human rights“ (Fritz Bauer).
Many individuals and initiatives are involved and have prepared the event, above all the Bochum „Alliance against the Right“. It is fantastic and certainly not a matter of course. The VHS supported the project right from the start, the city library made its rooms and holdings available, with selected works on the occasion, and the Centre for City History set up direct online access to its archive for the event. The Kinder- und Jugendring e.V. and „Demokratie leben!“ supported the event.
Bochum’s Head of Cultural Affairs Dietmar Dieckmann warmly welcomed the numerous participants, and the opening speech was given by Dr Monika Hauser, who is a campaigner for women’s rights with medicamondiale e.V., without sparing any expense or personal effort. The winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize presented the important work of medicamondiale e.V., in which there are many personal points of contact for our library. The interactive Fritz Bauer Library is a voice for human rights organisations that are confronted with stories of resistance and survival on a daily basis in their work. What this means was made clear by the Bochum-based theatre Traumbaum with its current interventions. For example, what will future generations say about us when we talk about the people who drown in the Mediterranean, fleeing violence and starvation, because we don’t help them?
The event highlighted the diversity of stories of resistance and survival. And it showed the opportunities that the Fritz Bauer Library opens up in the network of human rights organisations.
– The stories are localised historically, politically and geographically and can be researched in the wider context of the struggle for human rights worldwide.
– The stories are archived in a globally accessible and analysable relational database.
– The stories and individuals will be given a protective umbrella under the name of the renowned lawyer, Holocaust survivor and human rights campaigner Dr Fritz Bauer.
– The stories are actively used and networked in human rights education.
The idea for this was born in the context of our culture of remembrance, which has been accompanied by an „unease“ (Aleida Assmann) for some time. What does it mean if the contemporary witnesses of the Holocaust no longer accompany us, is one of the anxious questions. After all, the survivors of the Holocaust in particular are both reminders and warnings.
To put it more provocatively: Have we learnt from history? Are we equipped today to confront anti-Semitism, racism and nationalism, to actively combat them – as is currently necessary? Or are we astonished, not to say surprised, at the extent to which we are now experiencing racism, nationalism and, as its flipside, anti-Semitism here in Germany, but also in Europe and the USA?
I am not sure that we are sufficiently prepared. There are several reasons for this, one of which is that the survivors have always warned us with their „Never again!“ that history does not repeat itself, but that social conditions can change from one day to the next in crisis situations – and we are living in a time of crisis. Neighbours and friends can, as Hannah Arendt said, become opponents or enemies with almost incomprehensible speed. We should not forget that.
Another reason for scepticism is that simply by „remembering crimes“, i.e. by documenting what we have learned to respect as our negative memory, we are probably not sufficiently strengthened in our powers of resistance against racism, nationalism and anti-Semitism. To express this in the spirit of the jurist Dr Fritz Bauer:
Remembering alone is not enough, but an active „No!“ is called for when injustice occurs and human dignity is violated. He was concerned with the right and duty to resist when human rights are violated. For him, that was the meaning and purpose of the Nazi trials: You should have said no! After all, everyone would have been obliged to help and save the lives of persecuted Jews, Sinti and Roma, communists, social democrats, Christians, the disabled or so-called asocials, all those who were degraded, marginalised and declared without rights by the National Socialists.
But what does this mean for us today, for our historiography and culture of remembrance as it is cultivated in schools, at universities, in the judiciary, in medicine and in politics? In the spirit of Fritz Bauer, I would say that there is no neutrality in the face of violated human dignity.
One sentence by Fritz Bauer made a particular impression, and not just on me: „We cannot make heaven out of earth, but each of us can do something to prevent it from becoming hell.“ We can all do something to make our world a better and fairer place. There are enough role models for this, but we don’t recognise them enough and they are talked about far too little. In this context, the American psychologist Eva Fogelman quotes Rabbi Harold Schulweis with the incendiary question and answer: „What moral code says that evil can obscure good? What twisted logic leads us to erase the memory of what is noble in man in order to preserve the memory of his degeneracy? If we unearth the criminal outrages, we must by no means bury the virtues of humanity.“
This is what we want to achieve and change through the interactive library. It will make it clear that it is up to us, to each individual, to create the conditions for the good in people to grow and that there are many people who have done this and continue to do so.
Could there be, asked UNESCO Assistant Director Frank La Rue – himself a survivor of the civil war in Guatemala – when I told him about our project, a more important database than the one that tells the stories of people who have often given their lives for this world?
We therefore invite everyone to help write this story in the future. Join us in exploring, researching, filming and telling the story of the search for justice. Let us create a living archive of humanity, because this is the only way to keep the resistance „In the struggle for human rights“ alive.
We would like to thank the following initiatives and institutions: Bochum „Alliance against the Right“, bo-alternativ, VHS-Bochum, Centre for City History Bochum, Bochum City Library, Philippinenbüro e.V., GLS Zukunftsstiftung Entwicklung, Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Nationalsozialismus Bochum, Seebrücke Bochum, Amnesty International, Geschichtswerkstatt Bochum, „Demokratie leben!“, Kinder- und Jugendring e.V., Theater Traumbaum Bochum, medicamondiale e.V.