"HOMOSEXUAL MEN IN THE RAVENSBRÜCK CAMP COMPLEX"
EXHIBITION
Following a welcome from the museum's director, Andrea Genest, the topic was introduced by Piotr Chruścielski, a researcher from the Stutthof Concentration Camp Museum in Poland. Then, Katharina Jesdinsky and Peter Nathan from Muthesius Kunsthochschule Kiel presented the exhibition project and conducted the visitors through the exhibition.
Additionally, students of the “Drawing and Printmaking” class presented linocuts and other artistic works created during their one-week stay at the Ravensbrück Site. Their work focuses on the life story of Gustav Fritz Herzberg, who died in 1942 in the Ravensbrück men's camp.
Besides some 120,000 women, Ravensbrück also held over 20,000 men incarcerated in a separate camp established in Nazi Germany in April 1941. These included at least 200 men deported to the Ravensbrück camp as homosexuals. They ranked very low in the prison community hierarchy.
The exhibition is the first to address the conditions and experiences of imprisonment and persecution of homosexual men at Ravensbrück. The discourse also addresses the persistence of discrimination and criminalisation post-liberation. Unlike other persecuted groups, homosexual victims were denied recognition as victims of Nazi Germany after 1945 for decades.
The exhibition primarily centres on the life histories of seven men detained in the Ravensbrück camp complex because of their sexual orientation. The board exhibition showcases their life biographies within the context of the persecution of homosexual men during the Nazi regime in Germany.
The exhibition is available for viewing until 1 October 2023, at the former mechanical workshops at the rear of the Memorial Museum grounds, from 10 am to 6 pm.
The exhibition is realised by the Muthesius Kunsthochschule Kiel in partnership with the Ravensbrück Memorial Museum. The project is implemented under the auspices of the European Parliament.
Ravensbrück Memorial