Cottbus: A Station of Remembrance at the Human Rights Center
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A station becomes an intense place of remembrance
The special exhibition Cottbus: A Station of Remembrance. Deportations and Forced Labor in National Socialism makes visible how closely the Cottbus station was associated with exclusion, deportation, political imprisonment, and forced labor during the Nazi era. At the Cottbus Human Rights Center, local city history, European persecution history, and historical-political education converge.
Historical traces between tracks and memorial site
The Cottbus station was far more than an ordinary transportation hub during National Socialism. In 1938, Jewish individuals with Polish citizenship were expelled from Cottbus and the region to Poland. During World War II, deportation trains passed through Cottbus to ghettos in occupied Poland and to Theresienstadt. Transport from cities in western and southern Germany as well as from the occupied countries of Western Europe also traversed the Cottbus tracks.
The exhibition expands this view to include the prisoner transports to and from the women's penal institution in Cottbus. The curation links traffic history, persecution history, and the history of economic exploitation in a precise historical analysis.
Forced labor as part of Cottbus’s city history
Another focus is on the individuals who were forcibly taken to Cottbus for work during World War II. In industrial enterprises, at the Reichsbahn, in municipal facilities, and on farms, people from numerous European countries were forced to work. The Reichsbahn appears both as a transport organization and as part of a system of organized exploitation.
Historical documents, biographical traces, and local references introduce the living conditions of those subjected to forced labor. The exhibition connects local research with a European history of deprivation of rights, violence, and loss.
Media installation and aesthetic experience
At the center of the presentation is a media installation that recalls historical departure boards. Names and deportation locations evoke individual fates and transform the abstract concept of deportation into a concrete human story. Light, text, spatial effects, and documentary materials shape the exhibition atmosphere.
This art experience arises not from decorative staging, but from concentrated examination of sources, images, names, and historical contexts. The installation opens an aesthetic experience in which memory culture, cultural education, and responsible communication interlock.
Four thematic areas of the exhibition
The exhibition follows four interconnected thematic areas: the exclusion and deprivation of rights of the Jewish population, the deportation trains through Cottbus, the women's penal institution as a site of political imprisonment, and the everyday life of forced labor in businesses and institutions of the city. This creates a multifaceted panorama of Nazi history on site.
The project was created as part of the program MemoRails – Stop! Here we remember Nazi history of the Foundation for Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future and is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. The project sponsor is the Cottbus Human Rights Center e.V. in cooperation with exhibeo e.V., the AG Stolpersteine Cottbus, and the Cottbus Municipal Collections.
Conclusion: Experience history on site
The special exhibition welcomes visitors with a historically grounded, emotionally moving, and precisely curated engagement with deportations and forced labor in Cottbus. Those who wish to experience memory culture, political education, and regional history firsthand will find an important aesthetic experience against forgetting here. A visit to the Cottbus Human Rights Center is definitely worthwhile.
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