Obermayer Award

“There are a lot of people who never thought about that history, and now they are here.”

Exil e.V. turns a former concentration camp into a place of refuge and remembrance — and parties.

by Toby Axelrod

Eberswalde, Germany, in the 1990s was the wild, wild east.

Like many small towns in former East Germany in those early days after unification, Eberswalde wasn’t safe for foreigners or left-wing youth. Neo-Nazis were claiming the space, and they could be brutal towards people who didn't fit into their worldview. There were murders. There was fear.

Enter the Eberswalde punks, with their tattoos and self-dyed hair — and commitment to fighting back. They arranged secure spaces for migrants, and they even established contact with police to prevent neo-Nazi violence. 

One of these punkers, Kai Jahns, became a cofounder of Exil e.V., a nonprofit association with two main goals: to protect left-wing youth, migrants, and other minorities; and to ensure that the history of the Nazi crimes not be forgotten.

“In East Germany, we called the 1990s the years of baseball bats because everything was solved with that sports instrument,” says Jahns, who was born in 1968 in Eberswalde. He grew up in a family that tried not to make political waves. So it was truly revolutionary for him and his friends to take a stand against the neo-Nazis.   

During those tough years after German unification, they formed alliances with other like-minded activists. Taking inspiration from stories of resistance during World War II, they pushed back against the violent neo-Nazi gangs. They called themselves “DIY” punks. “At that time, DIY”— do it yourself — “meant beating the Nazis. There was no talking because they will beat you. So you have to beat them,” Jahns recalls.

An Unlikely Safe Haven

In 1997, Jahns and his punk companions occupied two barracks buildings at a former satellite camp of the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, where women slave laborers had been housed during World War II. The squatters saved the buildings at a former railway station and iron splitting factory, or Eisenspalterei, from demolition.

The barracks had been built in August 1943 for the Ardelt armaments factory. From September 1944 to April 1945, some 1,000 prisoners were brought there via rail from the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp, about 85 kilometers away in Fürstenberg. They worked 12-hour days under catastrophic conditions. In April 1945, the women were forced to evacuate the camp as Allied troops approached. The Soviet Army liberated the area at the end of April.

After the war, the barracks were used for a tailor shop for children's clothing. Next door was the central camp of a Soviet Army division.  

The area, which had been in the hands of the Soviet military since 1945, was no man's land after reunification in 1990 and was then assigned to Germany’s Federal Property Office. It sat unused until Jahns and his cohorts started a youth and culture club in those barracks — buildings that represent possibly the only above-ground evidence of a concentration camp subcamp remaining in the state of Brandenburg. 

The barracks, which are historical landmarks, also became a haven for families of contract workers from other countries who had managed to stay in Germany after the fall of the Wall.

Over time, the punk youth managed to change the atmosphere in Eberswalde. They had been inspired by stories of historical resistance against the Nazis. But, says Jahns, “No one ever taught us about the Jewish resistance.” They had to learn for themselves about the real history in Eberswalde and at the camp they had occupied. Their special surroundings prompted them to investigate and to think, he says — “think what was here, how we can touch it, how we can work with it.”

In the early 2000s, Ewa Czerwiakowski, author of several books on the Holocaust and German-Polish history, met the members of Exil. “From the first meeting, it was clear to me that this was an initiative that was unparalleled nationwide: a group of punk rockers who chose a very unusual location for their headquarters and venue, appropriated it, and were prepared to express themselves responsibly,” says Czerwiakowski.

In 2000, one of the local punks, Falco Lüdtke, was killed when he was pushed in front of a car by a neo-Nazi. Exil pressed to have the crime recognized as politically motivated and garnered support for the family. They started numerous projects in Lüttke’s memory. Jahns founded a counseling center and archive, and brought in partners to initiate a model kindergarten project in Eberswalde, to prevent children of migrants from being abused.   

In 2003, the Exil members created the Barnim Uckermark Community Foundation, named for the region where Eberswalde is located, at the Eisenspalterei site. 

In 2008, they were able to purchase the barracks from the Federal Property Office. The head of the legal department of the city of Eberswalde brought the price down to 1 euro, Jahns says. 

Exil’s mandate was to carry out youth education, particularly regarding the Nazi period. Initially, its members showed traveling exhibitions about Ravensbrück and the Moringen youth camp, a Nazi concentration camp for adolescent boys. They then developed their own permanent exhibition, “Reunion with Eberswalde: There is no hate here.” Opening in 2011, it was largely based on testimony of former slave laborers Janina Wyrzykowska, Wacława Gałęzowska, and Marianna Bogusz.

“The people of Eberswalde remember the very emotional contact and ultimately the visits from [these] former Polish forced laborers,” says Britta Stöwe, head of art and culture for the city of Eberswalde. Noting that the state, which still owned the property, even agreed to put up a plaque there, Stöwe says that the members of Exil and their partners “must be doing something right.” Exil “reaches young people in our city who would otherwise have turned to the right,” she adds.

The plaque, designed by sculptor Eckhard Herrmann, whose studio was located across the road from the historic site, is on a base made of 500 kilos of steel, says Jahns, “so that it cannot be smashed.” All the panels beforehand were destroyed by neo-Nazis.   

The permanent exhibition was replaced by a virtual tour in 2022. It has received state and federal funding, and support from the Amadeu-Antonio Foundation. 

A Gathering Place

Today, the former barracks are also a site for leisure activities, such as cooking, theater, arts and crafts, and music workshops, for local youth and young adults, newly arrived refugees or migrants, and others on the fringes of society. Exil provides help, support, and camaraderie that has made a difference for many new arrivals.

“[When] I came here to this country, I didn’t know the language,” says Mirna Alfadel, an immigrant from the Middle East. “I learned the language here [at Exil]. I made friends. Exil means a lot to me, and not just to me but to my siblings and friends. We came here as strangers, and Exil became a home.”

Exil fosters active engagement against antisemitism and racism past and present, and promotes democratic values. Its members have established a partnership with Amcha Germany, an advocacy organization for Holocaust survivors, founded in 1988. They also have reached out to descendants of Jews and former forced laborers from the area, as well as to other oppressed minorities targeted by the Nazis, particularly Sinti and Roma.

“I think that what makes it special is that it is a historical place but not a museum, and that it is absolutely alive,” says Paula Thormann, who is cochair of Exil along with Benjamin Carsten.

In 2019, Exil started a partnership with the Institute for New Social Sculpture, working together to reconstruct the Jewish history of Eberswalde’s brass works industry. Until 1933, this leading industrial site in Germany and Europe was owned by Aron Hirsch & Sons. The institute is planning a "kibbutz garden" at the Villa Hirsch, on the site of the first hachshara camp in Germany. The hachshara movement aimed to prepare Jews to immigrate (make Aliyah) to what was then Palestine. And in a former industrial hall, the "Jewish Cultural Workshop Brandenburg" includes a participatory exhibition on 100 years of Jewish migration in Brandenburg.

“The great talent of Kai Jahns and his home base Exil was and is to think for the city, to get people involved, to find partners, to infect others with his ideas for the city,” says Anna Brausam of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, in her letter of nomination.

Lest one think Exil is getting too conventional, one only has to take a look at its 2024 New Year’s concert, featuring the punk rock bands Obscene Revenge and Organized Chaos.

“Is it ok to play rock, drink beer, and party in a place where people suffered? Isn't that a desecration or even blasphemy?” asks Ewa Czerwiakowski rhetorically. In fact, she says, Exil deals with the past “in the best possible way: remembering and commemorating, but not allowing themselves to be forced into a rigid affectation that would turn the place into a lifeless memorial.”

Says Jahns, “You might say you cannot have a party in a former concentration camp. But there are a lot of people who never thought about that history, and now they are here. They have to think about it. We give them the information.

“And we have clear rules here: No Nazis, no idiots allowed.”

Today, there are still challenges in dealing with neo-Nazis and right-wing populist sentiment in Eberswalde, but there is also an active civil society that opposes them. Exil has driven this development. Without their many years of grassroots work, Eberswalde would be a very different city today.

— Obermayer Award recipient 2024