Selected Events 2006

Survivors of Nazi-era forced labor in Leipzig and their local hosts at the city’s memorial to the victims. (Photo credit: City of Leipzig)

November 17, 2006
Six individuals from Eastern Europe, removed by force from their homelands during World War II and put to work in the Leipzig area or born here during their mothers’ incarceration as forced laborers, accepted the City of Leipzig’s invitation to visit the city for a week as honored guests. U.S. Consul General Mark Scheland joined the group in a panel discussion at Leipzig’s “open university” (Volkshochschule) conducted for an audience of approximately 50 high and middle school students from the Geschwister-Scholl-Gymnasium in Taucha, Mittelschule Mölkau, and other Leipzig-area schools. Consul General Scheland discussed the structure of the Nazi regime’s use of slave and forced labor in parallel with its policy of extermination, postwar Germany’s compensation programs and their neglect of forced laborers, and the negotiations with private industry and governments leading to creation in 2000 of the German federal foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility, and the Future” (Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft).