These pages are dedicated to remembering people . They contain names and biographies of people who once lived in Augsburg. As different as these people were, they have one thing in common: their life stories break off abruptly. They were murdered. The only reason for this was that they did not fit into the National Socialist view of the world. They became victims of the fanaticism of racial purity that brought endless suffering into the world. It was also effective in Augsburg.
Not to be confined to the role of victim
The lives of these former fellow citizens are insufficiently described if we see them only as victims. They were people who lived in Augsburg; neighbors who had friends here, whom one met on the street, while shopping, at the theater, at the sports club. National Socialist ideology turned them into strangers, tried to rob them of their humanity. They were segregated, persecuted, humiliated, tortured, arrested, deported, and finally murdered. Some of those remembered on these pages were just able to escape this fate, others lost relatives. We commemorate them here, preserve their biographies and make them public on these pages. No person must be forgotten.
Addition to memorial signs in public
We see the memorial book as a necessary supplement to the memorial signs that will have been created in our city starting in 2017. If the information contained on the memorial shields and memorial stones is necessarily reduced to a minimum, their biographies stored here convey a much more vivid picture of the people we commemorate in both forms. The menu item "Places" in the bottom left-hand corner mediates between the memorial signs erected at the last voluntary place of residence and the biographies preserved here.
Civic initiative
The memorial book for Augsburg's victims of National Socialism is created through civic engagement and is sponsored by the city government. The biographies on these pages were written by Augsburg citizens. They come from pupils and university students, from committed people of all ages. At the suggestion and with the support of the Augsburg Remembrance Initiative and other Augsburg initiatives, they do research in the various archives, talk to relatives and thus preserve the concrete memory of people whom the National Socialists wanted to wipe out forever.
Still at the beginning
The memorial book is still in its infancy. Only a fraction of the biographies have been researched and published. That is why we are calling on all Augsburgers for cooperation and support. Help us to preserve the names and biographies of the victims of National Socialist tyranny. For its part, the Augsburg Remembrance Initiative offers help. Among other things, we regularly invite you to excursions, workshops and lecture events that provide information about our city's National Socialist past and introduce you to the research of biographies and their publication in the online memorial book.
Strengthening defenses
In this way, we want to encourage the broadest possible engagement with Augsburg's history under National Socialism. The common remembrance of the atrocities committed by Augsburg's National Socialists also helps to strengthen defenses against any ideology that once again turns people into strangers and tries to rob them of their humanity.
Nikolaus Hueck for the council of the Augsburg Remembrance Initiative
Translation by Wolfgang Poeppel