Bochumer Ermittlungen

On 9 November 1938 the synagogue in Bochum burns. Eleven years later, the district court attempts to find and convict the culprits. The interrogation records of the then judiciary are kept in the Bochum Centre for City History and are heard in this reading with the Ensemble of the Schauspielhaus Bochum. The minutes contain the testimonies of the NS mayor, firefighters, Nazi functionaries, SA men or simple party members. The files convey a picture of the events of 9 November, but at the same time they also reveal the ludicrous excuses or gaps in memory with which the perpetrators talked their way out in order not to be convicted: The investigations had to be stopped.

The reading is part of the public lecture and event series Bochumer Ermittlungen zur NS-Vergangenheit und ihrer Aufarbeitung (Bochum Investigations into the Nazi Past and its Processing), which the Bochum Centre for City History, the Institute for Social Movements of the Ruhr University, the Initiative Nordbahnhof e.V. and the Schauspielhaus Bochum are jointly organising on 23 and 24 November.

Language: German