A new museum opened on Wednesday in the central German city of Weimar to focus on the topic of forced labour under Nazism.
The extensive special exhibition "Bauhaus and National Socialism" at the Weimar Classicism Foundation, or Klassik Stiftung Weimar in German, is opening at the same time.
This is a clear statement on the relevance of dealing with Nazi crimes for the self-perception of democratic society in Germany, the director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, Jens-Christian Wagner, said on Wednesday in Weimar on the occasion of the opening of both sites.
Even today, there are "promises of inequality" that are "postulated by the far right." The new museum shows "where this leads," Wagner said.
The president of the Weimar foundation, Ulrike Lorenz, said that both the museum and the exhibition should strengthen the democratic resilience of those who visit these places.
This is particularly important because local, state and European elections are being held in Thuringia, where Weimar is located, she added.
The museum deals with forced labour under Nazism using case histories. It deals with the exploitation of forced labourers in German-occupied Europe and the deportation of millions of people to the German Reich.
The museum in the former Gauforum - the Nazi elite's regional centre of power for propaganda and administrative purposes built on a monumental scale - is run by the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation.