The lost memory of forced labour camps in the Czech Republic

"Nucena Prace" ("Forced Labour" in English) is a project aiming at bringing back the memory of forced labour camps on the territory of today's Czech Republic. While the story of forced labour in Nazi Germany is well known, the fact that there were many places in the Czech Republic where forced labour under the Nazi regime was extolled is less known. Forced labourers were deployed in factories, farming and construction sites. The story of forced labour under Nazi occupation reminds us of discrimination, exclusion, humiliation and exploitation – by no means phenomena of the past only. To study the forced labour under the Third Reich, one comes across issues and questions that still plague modern society.

An exhibition, a conference and five meeting involving Czech and German youth

The project consists of an exhibition that covers 18 towns, municipalities and forsaken places where citizens of many European countries were enslaved during the Second World War – Jews, Roma, Poles from Silesia, Ostarbeiter, prisoners of war, and others. For example, Polish forced labourers often worked in the farms in the Czech borderland.

The attention is drawn for the first time to the fact that forced labour was not confined to the territory of the Third Reich but included Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia as well. The exhibition, which is based on many testimonies of witnesses and archival materials including photographs, is available in Czech and German to allow for a cross-national dialogue on the issues of forced labour. 

"Nucena Prace" also consists in a conference for teachers, civil society, local authorities, as well as in five meetings of Czech and German youth. The last meeting in April this year will gather around 80 young Czechs and Germans in the former concentration camp Flossenbürg near the Czech border where the German version of the exhibition on the forced labour will be displayed for the first time and a debate will be organised.