Tabakfabrik Krems - 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.

In the 1930s, the tobacco factory in Krems employed around 1,000 workers, most of them women. In 1931 it produced some 75 million Virginia cigarettes. Like many other factories, the Krems branch of Austria Tabak was a site of organised resistance to National Socialism. The resistance fighter Leopoldine Puhl remembers the “Anschluss” in March 1938, when the workers were questioned at the gates of the tobacco factory about their political sympathies:

“Then all of them – the bosses, the foremen – were standing in their SA uniforms in front of the gate. We all had to salute with “Heil Hitler”. It was like running the gauntlet with rows of them on the left and right in front near the gate, and they looked to see who had a party badge; some people had only just joined the party […], and they pinned one on.” Leopoldine Puhl refused to give the Hitler salute. In 1942, along with other members of a resistance group, she was accused by the Gestapo of collecting donations for “Red Aid” and handing out Communist magazines. Puhl and other members of the resistance group were tried for “high treason” and sentenced to up to five years in prison. The story of this resistance group can be read on boards displayed on the second floor of the old building of the University for Further Education Krems, which has moved into part of the tobacco factory building.