Lagerland

The 20th century is rightly called the century of the camps. Two concentration camps, three large POW camps, several hundred subcamps and even more "civilian" forced labour camps and other camps were located in the area surrounding the former capital of the Reich, Berlin, now the state of Brandenburg. For over 25 years, the task of archaeology has been to track down these often forgotten places, to research their material remains, to preserve them as monuments and places of (spiritual) memory, and at the same time to enable new access to them. The countless finds provide access to the people imprisoned there: they speak for the now dying generation of contemporary witnesses. They testify to both individual fates and mass crimes in the 20th century: against any attempt at relativisation and denial. The research of the recent past by means of archaeology is exemplarily demonstrated here for the first time for a German federal state.