Cottbus: A Train Station of Remembrance Makes Nazi History Visible
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A Train Station Becomes a Place of Remembrance
The special exhibition Cottbus: A Train Station of Remembrance. Deportations and Forced Labor in National Socialism makes a long-suppressed part of Cottbus city history visible. At the Cottbus Human Rights Center, historical research is combined with memorial work, cultural education, and a striking media installation.
Historical Traces Between Tracks and Memorial Sites
The Cottbus train station was far more than an ordinary transport hub during the Nazi era. In 1938, Jewish individuals with Polish citizenship were expelled from Cottbus and the region to Poland. During World War II, deportation trains ran over the Cottbus tracks to ghettos in occupied Poland and to Theresienstadt. Transport from western and southern German cities as well as from occupied Western European countries also passed through the station.
The exhibition also highlights prisoner transports to and from the women’s prison in Cottbus. This creates a historical panorama where transport infrastructure, state persecution, political imprisonment, and disenfranchisement appear closely intertwined.
Four Narrative Threads of a Suppressed History
The curation follows four thematic lines: the exclusion and disenfranchisement of the Jewish population, the deportation trains over Cottbus, the women’s prison as a place of political imprisonment, and the daily lives of forced laborers in businesses and institutions of the city.
Documents, names, local references, and biographical traces bring visitors close to individual life stories. At the center is not decorative painting or classical sculpture, but a documentary installation that makes historical testimony spatially and media perceivable.
A Media Installation Like a Historical Departure Board
A defining element of the exhibition is a digital media installation that resembles historical departure boards. It lists names, deportation locations, former addresses, and routes. The familiar form of a train station becomes a silent choreography of remembrance: each entry refers to a personal fate and to the responsibility of institutions, administration, and society.
The atmosphere of the exhibition arises from the tension between factual presentation and emotional proximity. Light, text, spatial effects, and the reduced design direct the attention on what historical sources preserve: names, paths, losses, and traces of human exploitation.
Culture of Remembrance and Political Education
The project was developed within the framework of the MemoRails program – Stop! Here, we remember Nazi history and is supported by the Foundation Memorial, Responsibility and Future as well as the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Involved are the Cottbus Human Rights Center, exhibeo e.V., the Stolpersteine Cottbus working group, the municipal collections of Cottbus, and the Brandenburg Technical University Cottbus-Senftenberg.
Peer-to-peer tours and an intergenerational educational approach expand the exhibition with an important pedagogical dimension. Historical education is here linked to the present: the engagement with deportation and forced labor leads to questions about human rights, the rule of law, democracy, and social cohesion.
Conclusion: A Unique Art Experience
Visitors can expect a factually precise, emotionally concentrated exhibition about deportations, prisoner transports, and forced labor in Cottbus. The aesthetic experience arises from the connection of historical site, documentary installation, and personal memory. Those who wish to connect city history, culture of remembrance, and political education should definitely experience this intense art experience at the Cottbus Human Rights Center live.
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