Conference: Subaltern Memories 2025

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The conference »The Disavowed. Persecuted as ›Asocials‹ and ›Career Criminals‹ under Nazism and Fascism in Europe« will take place on November 6 and 7, 2025, at the NS Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne. It is organised by the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the NS Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne, and the University of Barcelona‘s EUROM – European Observatory on Memories, with the support of Catalonia International, a public–private consortium that connects Catalan talents and institutions, such as universities, with partners from other countries around the world.

The conference is part of the »Subaltern Memories« series of events, which have been promoted annually by EUROM since 2022 to give voice to memories related to certain social groups that have been silenced or marginalized — communities that historically suffered harsh repression. In this context, this year’s theme is directly linked to that of the exhibition »The Disavowed. Victims of National Socialism 1933 – 1945 – Today,« which will be on display at NS Documentation Centre from October 8, 2025, to January 4, 2026.

Between 1933 and 1945, authorities and police took up social prejudices. They controlled, harassed, and deprived tens of thousands of people of their freedom. Many were murdered. The ideological reference point was the concept of the »German national community« (»Volksgemeinschaft«). Its establishment was supposed to be achieved through the violent enforcement of an ›order of inequality‹.

To what extent did these principles of order play a role in the subjugation of large parts of Europe and its millions of non-German populations from 1938/39 onwards? In occupied Europe, robbery, forced labour, and racist, anti-Romani, and antisemitic mass murder were at the heart of Nazi policy. Nevertheless: In addition to this main stream policy of extermination, the German occupiers enforced exclusionary concepts of order against traditionally marginalised groups. As inside Germany, they relied primarily on hereditary biological assumptions (»social racism«).

The research on this topic is still in its infancy and not very synchronised. An assessment in relation to the overall history of German rule in Europe is missing. Key questions at the conference shall therefore be: What is the connection between the persecution of »asocials« and »career criminals« in Germany and the occupied territories? Is it a profitable research approach and is it even legitimate in terms of memory politics to focus on practices of exclusion of marginalised groups in the German-occupied territories – or, conversely, is there a danger of dilution, a risk of losing sight of the overall dimensions and main intentions of the German occupation regime by incorporating such intersectional perspectives and by focussing on these exclusionary aspects of persecution?

On the one hand, the conference focuses on the legal frameworks and the respective institutions of persecution in individual occupied territories and allied fascist states like Spain under the rule of Franco’s dictatorship. On the other hand, it focuses in particular on the individual experiences of those persecuted and aspects of remembrance culture. Where did the persecuted speak? Can the rumour that they left no sources of their own be refuted? In post-war Europe, marginalising stereotypes persisted, compensation was refused to those affected, and their experiences of injustice are denied. Continuities of exclusion persist to this day. The conference therefore also looks at legal concepts and police practices today.

The conference »The Disavowed. Persecuted as ›Asocials‹ and ›Career Criminals‹ under Nazism and Fascism in Europe« will take place on November 6 and 7, 2025, at the NS Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne. It is organised by the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the NS Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne, and the University of Barcelona‘s EUROM – European Observatory on Memories, with the support of Catalonia International, a public–private consortium that connects Catalan talents and institutions, such as universities, with partners from other countries around the world. The conference is part of the »Subaltern Memories« series of events, which have been promoted annually by EUROM since 2022 to give voice to memories related to certain social groups that have been silenced or marginalized — communities that historically suffered harsh repression. In this context, this year’s theme is directly linked to that of the exhibition »The Disavowed. Victims of National Socialism 1933 – 1945 – Today,« which will be on display at NS Documentation Centre from October 8, 2025, to January 4, 2026.