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Tobias Schabel as Wallenberg, photo: Ingo Hoehn © Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe

Raoul Wallenberg, who has been celebrated for decades as a great hero, would have turned 100 this year. The son of a Swedish family of bankers travelled to Budapest at the beginning of July 1944 on behalf of the War Refugee Board, in order to warn Jews living there of their coming destruction. He used his diplomatic immunity to issue Swedish passports for their protection as well as to create safe housing and is believed to have saved tens of thousands from death. Wallenberg disappeared at the end of the war, allegedly dying in a Russian prison. The first memorial to him had already been erected in Budapest by 1949. → continue reading

A police siren blares through the last rooms of the permanent exhibition. The source of the alarming noise is a film excerpt being displayed on a large screen.

This section of the exhibition is about the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial that took place from December 1963 until August 1965. Former SS members of the Auschwitz concentration camp authority were tried for murder or for aiding and abetting murder. The litigation is regarded as a turning point in the way the National Socialist past was dealt with in the new Federal Republic. → continue reading