6.4.45 by Ramesch Daha - Krems macht Geschichte

Introduction

KremsMachtGeschichte invites you to learn about and engage with the history of National Socialism in Krems. As you move through the city you connect various historical sites with each other. A simple stroll creates a personal narrative that brings the places, themes and histories into the present and enables you to keep the past alive in your critical memory.

What does it mean to “make history”? In 1938 Krems became the capital of the Gau, or Nazi administrative district, of “Lower Danube”. This was a time when Krems was making history, but history of a kind many would like to forget today. Today, when we remember, when we name perpetrators and tell the stories of victims, when we make resistance visible and point out continuities, we’re participating in the writing of history in our society. History isn’t just written in schoolbooks and by historians and at universities; it’s continually being produced by our everyday actions. History happens in the here and now.

24 historical sites, marked by green pennants, form the stations of the KremsMachtGeschichte tours. Every site stands for a different event that has something to tell us about destruction, persecution and crime, as well as about responsibility, solidarity and resistance. Some roads lead to memorials that glorify the past and that today need some historical correction. Prominent positions in the cityscape are taken up by the court and the prison, places where Nazi violence was once inflicted but that today contribute to the functioning of democracy. Many sites of past events are unrecognisable as such today; only through your imagination can they come back to life.

The information about each place can be called up with any smartphone by using the QR codes on the pennants. Texts and images can also be found in the catalogue which is displayed at various places in the city. By taking a walk through the city, you’re already making some history. En route from site to site, the historical picture gradually becomes more intricate. Common themes emerge, each of which groups the sites in a new way and connects them with our contemporary world. The themes include “on Jewish life”, “on resistance”, “on persecution and punishment” and “on remembering”. The short texts under these titles give some initial ideas that you can question and add your own stories to on the empty pages of the catalogue.

6.4.45 is a 100-metre-long and 7.5-metre-high mural by the artist Ramesch Daha on the external wall of the Krems-Stein Penal Institution. The title refers to the massacre in what was then Stein Prison on 6 April 1945.

Shortly before the end of the war and the liberation by the Red Army, Franz Kodré, the director of the prison, ordered the release of all prisoners. The guard Anton Pomassl, who was “block leader” of the local NSDAP branch, informed the Nazi district administration in Krems. A force comprising personnel from the paramilitary terror organisation SS, its military wing the Waffen-SS, the regular armed forces Wehrmacht and the conscript militia Volkssturm advanced and, on the pretext of suppressing a revolt, opened fire on the prisoners. Many people who nevertheless managed to get out of the prison alive were captured by inhabitants of the region around Krems and shot dead.

The massacre at Stein Prison and the associated local murders, which were cynically dubbed the “Krems Hare Hunt”, took the lives of around 600 prisoners. Painted in blue on the wall, the artwork 6.4.45 reproduces 17 pages of the register book in which the prisoners’ names were recorded. The writing has been copied in such a way that the individual names are illegible. Some names are crossed out; these are prisoners who finished serving their sentences after 1945 and whose entries were usually deleted from the register.

The names on the selected register pages are not, however, a full list of all the people murdered, for whom there remains no complete record. A list of names of the people killed on and after 6 April 1945 is being compiled by a group of historians.