14 November 2025

Under the organisational direction of Prof. Dr Viola Sporleder-Geb, the actors Stefan Dehler and Christoph Huber (theatre production „stille hunde“) and the director of the Moringen Concentration Camp Memorial in southern Lower Saxony, Stefan Wilbricht, were guests at Nordhausen University of Applied Sciences on 10 November 2025.

After the welcoming address by Vice President Prof. Cordula Borbe, the audience was treated to a touching and moving play, which was conceived in 2009 by the two actors together with the memorial as a „classroom play“ for educational work in schools based on eyewitness accounts.

This play, whose title takes up the Nazi state's favourite term „Besserung“ (improvement), is about the life of fourteen-year-old Franz, who is registered with the Nazi youth authorities in 1942 as a „drifter“ and „puberty failure“ and, after two escape attempts from the youth home, is transferred to the so-called „youth protection camp“ in Moringen. The story of the prisoner Franz is embedded in a frame story in which his son meets up with the son of Willi, a former fellow prisoner - after the death of their fathers, who have concealed their concentration camp imprisonment out of shame. The two sons now painstakingly piece together what they know about the history of the youth concentration camp. Situations from the 1940s are recounted in flashbacks, as well as Franz's memories, which he confided to his son shortly before his death. It becomes clear how arbitrary admissions to the Moringen police youth protection camp were at the time, for which, for example, alleged indiscipline, failure to attend work, listening to forbidden swing music or rejection of Nazi youth organisations were sufficient, and how much permanent, systematic violence and humiliation in the camp traumatised the young people forever. „The worst thing was the hunger,“ says Franz looking back, and in a farewell letter to Willi he confesses with shame that he stole from him in the camp - a tin spoon, a cap, a towel, precious items that were essential for survival, which he exchanged for crusts of bread so as not to starve himself. The fear of going hungry again was etched into Franz and Willi's minds for the rest of their lives; Willi's son now realises why his father hit him once - when he carelessly threw away a slice of bread.

The theatre play got under the skin and so it was good that there was the opportunity for an intensive discussion afterwards. The visibly moved audience asked many questions. Stefan Dehler and Christoph Huber also reported on the history of the play's creation and how they experience the performances at various locations. Stefan Wilbricht explained the history of the Moringen concentration camp, which was not officially recognised until 1973 and in which around 1,400 young men aged between 13 and 23 were imprisoned from 1940 to 1945, in horrifying detail. It had previously served as a women's concentration camp from late 1933 to 1938. Political opponents were transferred to Moringen as early as April 1933 - making Moringen one of the first concentration camps set up by the Nazi state.

In the end, it is important to keep history alive and to show the effects of the abolition of democracy and the rule of law, especially in times of denial of history, disinformation and the loss of trust in democracy observed in various representative surveys.