Stolen Memory - Exhibition at the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial

Arolsen Archives still holds around 2000 envelopes containing personal belongings - so-called effects - that were stolen from people when they were sent to a concentration camp. #StolenMemory is part of a campaign to find relatives of former concentration camp prisoners in order to return their personal belongings to their families. Over 1,000 families have already been found since the campaign was launched in 2016. Many of these effects come from the Neuengamme concentration camp.

The exhibition will be shown in a container set up on the former roll call square of the Neuengamme concentration camp. The exhibition tells the stories of the lives and persecution of former concentration camp prisoners with the help of their personal belongings. It shows objects belonging to people whose families have already been found by the Arolsen Archives for the return of the effects and objects belonging to people whose families are still being sought in order to return the stolen objects.

‘Many victims of the National Socialists left no material traces for their families because the National Socialists took everything from them,’ says Floriane Azoulay, Director of the Arolsen Archives. The return of the effects is therefore often very unexpected for the relatives: ‘Some of them know nothing or very little about this part of the life story of their grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts’. This makes it all the more important that the objects are returned to the families.

Visitors to the exhibition can use their smartphone to access video portraits in which the relatives themselves have their say. To accompany the exhibition, the website stolenmemory.org offers short, animated films that tell the stories of individual fates.