On 22 June 1941, the German Reich invades the Soviet Union. By the end of the war, the Wehrmacht has captured around 5.7 million servicemen and women of the Red Army. Their treatment was criminal.

Anti-Bolshevik and racist attitudes played just as much a role as military and economic interests of the Nazi regime. In total, more than three million Soviet prisoners of war perished. A large number of them were shot. Most of them died of hunger and disease due to completely inadequate care, especially by the spring of 1942. In the Soviet Union, the survivors were confronted with the distrust of the authorities. They were under general suspicion of treason and socially disadvantaged for decades.

With more than three million dead, Soviet prisoners of war are one of the largest groups of victims of German mass crimes. Yet to this day they are hardly remembered.

The exhibition offers a first introduction to the topic. Nine chapters provide a thematic overview up to the present, biographies present individual fates, a map of Europe shows selected camp locations and numbers of victims, and media stations enable research on selected memorial sites and a source-critical examination of photograph(s).

The exhibition is bilingual: German/English.