Obermayer Award

Making the history relevant, in an area where neo-Nazis thrive

From historical hiking trips to comic books about standing up against hate, AKuBiZ finds creative ways to make a difference.

To understand the challenges of AkuBiZ, a tiny organization in the hills of Saxony, it’s best to understand the landscape.

Not just the geographical landscape, though that helps. The group, which goes by its German acronym, is the Alternative Culture and Education Center. It’s been fighting anti-Semitism, right-wing extremism, and racism for 20 years.

AkuBiZ’s headquarters is in Pirna, some 16 miles (26km) southeast of Dresden, the capital of Saxony, in the former East Germany. It’s one of the most stunning places in the country and an outdoor enthusiast’s paradise. The area, known as Saxon Switzerland, boasts 1,000 free-standing sandstone rocks, some 27,000 climbing routes, along with nearly 750 miles (1,200 km) of hiking paths, not to mention mountain and road bike routes and canoe and paddle boat opportunities.

But it’s the political landscape that has affected the group. The region is home to one of the country’s largest concentrations of neo-Nazis. In addition, some 250,000 residents live in the region around Pirna, and about one-third of them support right-wing parties and politics. 

The area is not only a center for neo-Nazi protests and violence but also music. In 1997 a local neo-Nazi band whose lyrics spout anti-Semitism and hate won the top prize for best newcomer band of the year. The competition was sponsored by the region’s largest newspaper and a local savings bank. The band’s frontman was a founding member of the now banned right-wing extremist group Skinheads Saxon Switzerland or SSS.

The rocky backdrop—both physical and political—is not lost on Steffen Richter, co-founder of the group. In 2001, Richter’s car was first vandalized and later torched. Gasoline was poured over the interior and it was set aflame, destroying his car and a neighboring vehicle. No one was ever arrested. 

But it was that year that Richter and some 15-20 others harnessed the courage to form the Alternative Youth and Cultural Center. Its goal was to acquire a place where youth could engage in recreational activities, but that was never realized, in part due to lack of funds. The group started giving talks about symbols in the neo-Nazi scene and about anti-Semitism today, and they realized offering educational opportunities for local residents was increasingly important. In 2005, the group changed its name to Alternative Culture and Education Center.

Organizers soon realized that making history relevant to the region was key. Anne Nitschke, a soft-spoken immigration lawyer and AkuBiZ board member, says it was “really important to make history accessible.”  Richter adds that it’s one thing to talk about Auschwitz and Sobibor, but quite another to show local residents that there was a concentration camp, killings, and persecutions in your own neighborhood.

Dresden resident Michael Nattke agrees. He has participated in several AkuBiZ activities and sees the importance of making history relevant. “For some young people, the Nazi time is something that happened shortly after the Middle Ages,” he says. “That’s how they categorize it for themselves.” AkuBiZ’s approach of showing local places where acts of anti-Semitism occurred makes these crimes “more seeable,” Nattke says. 

The group launched several key projects beginning in 2006. That’s when it inaugurated an Antiracist Soccer Cup, in which the winner was not the team with the most goals, but the one best demonstrating fair play. Supporting events, like a quiz game, exhibitions, and handcraft activities accompanied the competition. Pirna players were challenged by those from the Jewish Community of Dresden, Czech teams, and teams composed of asylum seekers, among others.

The next year AkuBiZ published a comic book which, due to demand, expanded to three editions, most of which sold out. The comic was designed to help young people deal with right wing attacks. A follow-up comic was published in 2016.

In 2008 it released a digital memorial square (gedenkplaetze.info), which is an interactive website where viewers click on points and get more information about local Nazi history. In addition, they have developed various exhibitions in cooperation with local historian Hugo Jensch.

Yet another project launched in 2008 is the group’s very popular hiking program, tours in which guides explain the history of Nazi persecution in the area. The idea for such hikes actually comes from Italy, Richter says, where hiking tours follow the path of the anti-fascist partisans fighting Mussolini. In the beginning, some 20 people went on the AkuBiZ hikes, but more recently they attracted 60.

In one hike, walkers come upon the Hohnstein Castle, which is now used for events like weddings and family gatherings and was previously one of Germany’s largest youth hostels. In the 1930s it was a concentration camp for communists, Jews, and others persecuted in Nazi Germany. In another hike, participants learn about the Scoolers, a Jewish family that owned a paper factory in the area, and their fate. One son and his family perished in the Holocaust. His brother and mother were able to emigrate eventually to the United States. 

The hikes, Richter says, highlight the group’s emphasis on regional work and showing locals that the excuse that “we didn’t know what was happening” cannot be true. “There were about 1,000 prisoners working, breaking stones” at the Hohnstein castle. “Everyone living nearby could see the columns of prisoners walking through the area.” 

Other hikes take walkers to the Czech border with southern Germany, where persecuted anti-fascists escaped to what was then Czechoslovakia. Another shows where persecuted residents were forced to gather before being shipped to the camps. “We want to show that history took place here with people from here—both the victims and the persecutors,” Richter says. 

Hohnstein Castle has a restaurant and is a weekend destination for Dresden city residents. “I didn’t know that there was a concentration camp there,” says Nattke, and once you learn that, he says, the place takes on a completely different meaning.

Nattke heard about the hikes from friends but didn’t have any idea really what they were about. He learned about resistance fighters and persecution during these hikes.

“I believe only a few know about the history of this location during the Nazi time. There is no knowledge about that in the population…that these mountains had various concentration camps or outdoor camps or that people performed resistance. They hid people in the rocks. That is actually not well known.” he says. 

New Attacks

Considering that its co-founder’s car was set on fire in the previous decade, things were going fairly well for the group in the second decade of this century. “If you had asked me what the situation was in 2012, I would have said it’s pretty good,” Richter says. “There was a strengthening of the civil society and support from some cities.” And then came 2015. 

That’s when an influx of more than a million refugees, many from war-torn places like Syria and Afghanistan, started to pour into Germany, and the public’s growing acceptance of AkuBiZ’s anti-racist message reversed. Before, Richter says, it was clear where someone opposing the neo-fascists would not go. For example, you’d avoid going to the train station after a soccer game because that’s where the neo-Nazis would congregate. The no-go zones were fairly clear. “I knew I was relatively safe if I avoided certain areas,” he says.

After 2015 that was no longer true.

The attacks and insults were “no longer structured,” he says. A person could be walking down a street and a middle-aged so-called “normal married couple” would spit at someone or take the air out of a bike tire parked in front of a store.

“It’s much more confusing and harder to deal with,” he says, since you could be insulted or attacked anywhere. AkuBiZ had to cancel the soccer tournament after 2015 because of increasing racists threats, including attacks on the competition, threats to teams, and vandalism to AkuBiZ’s office, where windows were smashed.

Still the group persevered, essentially with an all-volunteer staff. This, Nattke says, is remarkable. After working at a day job, volunteers spend countless hours giving workshops on the weekend, conducting hikes, or researching projects for school children. “I find that impressive. It’s unbelievable what they are accomplishing,” he says.

This year, undeterred by the tough political climate and the current Corona virus restrictions, AkuBiZ is planning to improve its “Jewish Life in Pirna and Saxon Switzerland” exhibition and post additional material to its interactive website, gedenkplaetze.info.

And the political will meet the geographical landscape once again. AkuBiZ’s hikes are on hold due to the Corona virus outbreak, but hikers are set resume their walks in the hills near Pirna in June 2021.

— Obermayer Award recipient 2021