Mahnmal für die Zwangsarbeiter im 2. Weltkrieg / Memorial for the Forced Labourers of the Second World War

This memorial for the forced labourers of the second world war, which was installed on the grounds behind the municipal library in 1998, can be regarded as an example for a successful process of coming to terms with the Nazi era in a school context, which started in the early 1990s. The decision to name the first comprehensive school in Gütersloh after Anne Frank had been taken two years before, and the name was seen as a mandate. It was initiated by tracing the addresses of former forced labourers and the completion of a master’s thesis by Till Kössler on the subject of “Work Details in a Medium-Sized town. Foreign Workers in the area around Gütersloh in the field of tension between rulers and society, 1939-1945.” All in all, there were 22 civilian labour and prisoner of war camps in the City of Gütersloh. At least 3,800 persons from other nations worked in 40 companies between 1939 and 1945. During this period, 158 of the prisoners of war and forced labourers, most of whom came from the Soviet Union and Poland, died.
Inspired by the school’s focus on the subject, Sonja Gerdes and her upper-level art class designed this sculpture which was then realised with the help of a larger circle. Out of a cone-shaped, amorphous hill whose cast bronze still shows the traces of work on the clay model and thus evokes mud or earth, human bodies grow, first as fragmented skeletons, then higher up as more and more complete human figures. The top is formed by a couple embracing each other. Another figure who rests their face on their hands in despair also protrudes from the tapering shape. This visualises various forms of suffering and misery forced labourers were exposed to and inspires empathy in the viewer.