Jens-Christian Wagner (born 1966) is a German historian who specializes in the Nazi era and the politics of memory. [1] Wagner has published multiple academic books about Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp and its subcamps. He was the director of Mittelbau-Dora memorial from 2001, was the chairman of Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation , and became the overseer of Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation in 2020.
![The former Appellplatz of Ellrich-Juliushutte [de] KZ Aussenlager Ellrich Juliushutte Appellplatz Gedenkstein Eingang.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/KZ_Aussenlager_Ellrich_Juliush%C3%BCtte_Appellplatz_Gedenkstein_Eingang.jpg/260px-KZ_Aussenlager_Ellrich_Juliush%C3%BCtte_Appellplatz_Gedenkstein_Eingang.jpg)
In 1999, Wagner received his doctorate from the University of Göttingen; his dissertation, supervised by Bernd Weisbrod , focused on the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp and was later published as Produktion des Todes: Das KZ Mittelbau-Dora ("Production of Death: the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp"). [2] [3] As of 2010 [update] , it is the only book that covers the entire history of Mittelbau-Dora. [3] The book focuses on the collaboration between the SS and the armaments industry, the relationship between extermination and forced labor, and the position of the camp vis-a-vis its surroundings. [4] According to reviewer Christiane Grieb, the book, unlike other studies, focuses on the victims of the camp rather than on "wonder weapons" and correctly identifies death as the main "product" of the camp. She praised the book for its in-depth research and placing the camp in its historical and spatial context. [3] Historian Manfred Grieger stated, "Anyone interested in the history of the Kohnsteiner camp complex and the relationship between work and extermination in the concentration camp system cannot ignore this book." [5]
In 2009, Wagner published a book, Ellrich 1944/45: Konzentrationslager und Zwangsarbeit in einer deutschen Kleinstadt ("Ellrich 1944/45: Concentration camp and forced labor in a small German town") about the Ellrich concentration camp complex, a subcamp of Mittlebau-Dora which operated in 1944 and 1945 in the Harz mountains around the town of Ellrich. Historian Panikos Panayi praised the book for its high quality and comprehensive coverage, stating that it was "a precise and detailed narrative of virtually all aspects of the camps". [6]
Wagner has served as the director of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp memorial since 2001. In 2014, he was appointed chairman of the Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation whose purpose is to commemorate Nazi crimes committed in Lower Saxony, for a five-year term. [1] In May 2020, he succeeded Volkhard Knigge as the director of Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation. [7] [8]
Wagner stated that in the late 2010s, there was an increase in hecklers at Nazi concentration camp sites who questioned historical facts and tried to downplay Nazi crimes. Wagner stated that heckling incidents occurred "on a weekly basis from people of all ages and all backgrounds, although they are almost exclusively ethnically German" and blamed politicians from Alternative for Germany (AfD) for shifting the window of what it was publicly acceptable to say. [9] [10] [11] [12] Wagner has stated that he receives threats for his work and reports them to the state prosecutor. [11] [13] Around the same time he made four reports to police within a week because he found right-wing extremist statements in the visitor guidebook contrary to the German constitution. [13] In 2019, both Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora memorials banned AfD representatives from events "unless they credibly distance themselves from the anti-democratic, revisionist positions in their party". [13] Guests who wear Thor Steinar, a brand of clothing associated with neo-Nazism, are asked to cover it up and are denied entry if they refuse to comply. [13]
In 2020, he told different German media outlets that memorials should not just focus on victims, but also explain the role of perpetrators, bystanders, and profiteers of Nazi persecution. [14] [15] Wagner criticized the use of Nazi comparisons in protests over COVID-19 policies in Germany, which he states are "an appalling mockery and a trivialization of the crimes committed by the Nazis." After a young corona-protestor compared herself to Nazi resistance activist Sophie Scholl, he suggested that German education focused too much on the victims of Nazi persecution without addressing the question of how these people became victims. [16]
In September 2020, there was a controversy over a speech co-written by Wagner and read by Bergen mayor Claudia Dettmar-Müller, which included the statement: "During the Second World War the SS and Wehrmacht committed unimaginable crimes on our doorstep." Local politicians from AfD as well as Social Democratic Party, Free Democratic Party and Christian Democratic Union distanced themselves from these words, despite the historical fact of war crimes of the Wehrmacht. [17] [18] [19] Later in the month, he filed a complaint against the AfD in Bergen for Volksverhetzung. [20]
In November 2020, Wagner received a call from Göttingen public prosecutor informing him that he was under investigation for publishing "defamatory facts to the detriment of Wehrmacht soldiers". [9] [21] The complaint, filed by a retired Bundeswehr officer, [22] focused on his book, Armament, War and Crimes: The Wehrmacht and the Bergen-Hohne Barracks, a companion to a museum exhibition about crimes of the Wehrmacht. [23] The proceedings were discontinued, but Wagner said he fears that "it has become socially acceptable again to talk about a clean Wehrmacht", a long-disproven myth. [9] [24] The prosecution was criticized by Süddeutsche Zeitung editor Ronen Steinke, who praised Wagner for "setting standards in the explanation of the German war of annihilation for many years". [25] Green politician Jürgen Trittin called the investigation "scandalous". [22]
In 2012, Wagner was awarded the Ordre des Palmes académiques for his services to French-German relations and his work at the Mittelbau Dora memorial. [26]
Buchenwald was a Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or suspected communists were among the first internees.
Mittelbau-Dora was a Nazi concentration camp located near Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany. It was established in late summer 1943 as a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp, supplying slave labour from many Eastern countries occupied by Germany, for extending the nearby tunnels in the Kohnstein and for manufacturing the V-2 rocket and the V-1 flying bomb. In the summer of 1944, Mittelbau became an independent concentration camp with numerous subcamps of its own. In 1945, most of the surviving inmates were sent on death marches or crammed in trains of box-cars by the SS. On 11 April 1945, US troops freed the remaining prisoners.
Richard Baer was a German SS officer who, among other assignments, was the commandant of Auschwitz I concentration camp from May 1944 to January 1945, and right after, from February to April 1945, commandant of Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Following the war, Baer lived under an assumed name to avoid prosecution but was recognized and arrested in December 1960. He died in detention before he could stand trial.
Ellrich is a town in the district of Nordhausen, in Thuringia, Germany. It is situated on the southern edge of the Harz, 13 km northwest of Nordhausen. It is the northernmost settlement in Thuringia.
Franz Hößler, also Franz Hössler was a Nazi German SS-Obersturmführer and Schutzhaftlagerführer at the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dora-Mittelbau and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps during World War II. Captured by the Allies at the end of the war, Hößler was charged with war crimes in the First Bergen-Belsen Trial, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He was executed by hanging at Hameln Prison in 1945.
International concentration camp committees are organizations composed of former inmates of the various Nazi concentration camps, formed at various times, primarily after the Second World War. Although most survivors have since died and those who are still alive are generally octogenarians, the committees are still active.
Hans Karl Moeser was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era who served at the Neuengamme, Auschwitz and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps. He was captured at the end of the war and tried by the United States Military Government Court. The only one among 19 defendants at the Dora Trial sentenced to death, Möser was executed at Landsberg Prison in 1948.
The Dora Trial, also the "Dora"-Nordhausen or Dachau Dora Proceeding was a war crimes trial conducted by the United States Army in the aftermath of the collapse of the Third Reich. It took place between August 7 and December 30, 1947, on the site of the former Dachau concentration camp, Germany.
Franz Stärfl, alias Xaver Stärfel, alias Franz Stofel, was a Nazi German SS-Hauptscharführer and camp commander of the Kleinbodungen subcamp of Mittelbau-Dora during World War II. Arrested by the Allies and convicted of war crimes in the Belsen Trial, Stärfl was executed by hanging at Hamelin prison in 1945.
Helmut Hermann Wilhelm Bischoff was a German SS-Obersturmbannführer and Nazi official. During World War II he was the leader of Einsatzkommando 1/IV in Poland and later headed the Gestapo offices in Poznań (Posen) and Magdeburg.
Wilhelm Dörr was a German SS-Oberscharführer and concentration camp officer. He served as a guard at the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp and as deputy commander of the sub-camp of Kleinbodungen. Following World War II he was convicted of war crimes by British occupation authorities in the Belsen Trial and executed.
Subcamps, also translated as satellite camps, were outlying detention centres (Haftstätten) that came under the command of a main concentration camp run by the SS in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. The Nazis distinguished between the main camps and the subcamps subordinated to them. Survival conditions in the subcamps were, in many cases, poorer for the prisoners than those in the main camps.
The Buchenwald trial or United States of America vs. Josias Prince of Waldeck et al. was a war crime trial conducted by the United States Army as a court-martial in Dachau, then part of the American occupation zone. It took place from April 11 to August 14, 1947 in the internment camp of Dachau, where the former Dachau concentration camp had been located until late April 1945. In this trial, 31 people were indicted for war crimes related to the Buchenwald concentration camp and its satellite camps, all of whom were convicted. The Buchenwald trial was part of the Dachau trials, which were held between 1945 and 1948.
Edmond Debeaumarché was a French postal worker who joined the French Resistance during World War II. For his service Debeaumarché was highly decorated. In 1960 Debeaumarché received the posthumous distinction of being depicted on a postage stamp in the series Heroes of the Resistance.
Block 66, the Children's Block, or Kinderblock was part of Buchenwald concentration camp, in what was known as the "little camp", which was separated from the rest of the camp by barbed wire. Buchenwald was a labor camp, and as a result a child's chances of survival depended greatly on their age. The older they were, the better, because that meant that they were fit to do work. Oftentimes, children lied about their ages to make them older, so that rather than being sent to Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen to be killed, they could work in the camp. Children were at high risk for being killed at Buchenwald, because if they were too weak or young, this meant that they were unfit for labor, and therefore had no use. The creation of the children's barrack, Block 66, served to protect these children from the Nazi agenda.
The Artern Subcamp in Artern was a subcamp of the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald.
Boelcke-Kaserne concentration camp was a subcamp of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp complex where prisoners were left to die after they became unable to work. It was located inside a former Luftwaffe barracks complex in Nordhausen, Thuringia, Germany, adjacent to several pre-existing forced labor camps. During its three-month existence, about 6,000 prisoners passed through the camp and almost 3,000 died there under "indescribable" conditions. More than a thousand prisoners were killed during the bombing of Nordhausen by the Royal Air Force on 3–4 April 1945. Their corpses were found by the US Army units that liberated the camp on 11 April. Photographs and newsreel footage of the camp were reported internationally and made Nordhausen notorious in many parts of the world.
Norbert Frei is a German historian. He holds the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Jena, Germany, and leads the Jena Center of 20th Century History. Frei's research work investigates how German society came to terms with Nazism and the Third Reich in the aftermath of World War II.
Albert Kuntz was a German goldsmith, soldier, communist and concentration camp victim. A soldier in the First World War, Kuntz rose to become an elected representative of the German Communist Party in Berlin's Prussian Landtag. In 1933 he was arrested by the Gestapo, and sent to a succession of prisons and concentration camps. He died in January 1945 at the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, where he had been organizing the sabotage of the V-2 rocket production line. Following his death, he was revered as an anti-fascist hero in East Germany.
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