An premiere in Augsburg: chants of survival illuminates Nazi compulsory work!

An premiere in Augsburg: chants of survival illuminates Nazi compulsory work!

In the Augsburg State Theater, the play "Songs of survival" was premiered on July 5, 2025, which deals impressively and emotionally with the forgotten stories of forced laborers during the Nazi dictatorship. The director Tine Rahel Völcker has researched biographies that put us back in the dark time during the Second World War. At the center of the staging is the moving life story of Jakob "Johnny" Bamberger, a sinto and boxer who worked in concentration camps and in the armaments production of the Messerschmitt-Werke how Nachtkritik.de reported.

"Johnny" Bamberger received little compensation for his concentration camp custody because he was considered a criminal-his offenses included the fake of papers for an escape. This frightening marginalization of the fate of the forced laborers becomes clear in the staging of Nicole Schneiderbauer, which Bamberg is an outraged character that fights bitterly against an unfairly designed game. The clear symbolism and the choreographic elements of the performance support this urgent message.

The importance of compensation payments

The topic of forced labor is not only part of the past, but still of social importance. The inadequate compensation that many survivors have received illustrate the difficulties with which these people and their descendants are faced. The Federal Republic has paid to individual states since the 1950s, but many cases have been unnoticed to this day. The use of forced labor was a central economic pillar of the total war from 1942, and German industry also took misery, such as the Tagesspiegel

The initiative "Remembering Responsibility" (EVZ) was founded in 2001 in order to provide the affected people a little justice through one -off payments. Between 2001 and 2006, over 4.7 billion euros were paid to around 1.7 million. The compensation was between 500 and 7700 euros, depending on the approval of the respective application. It is a merciless chapter in which many German companies had to admit their guilt after decades of denying their entanglement in forced labor and Holocaust.

a place of learning and memory

The current staging not only commemorates the past, but also aims to deal with the story, which is often in the shadow of social acceptance. In addition to the main story, the evening in the State Theater also contains fragmentary stories of contemporary witnesses that slow down the force of the narrative, but can also provide an insight into what has been experienced. The absence of a place of remembrance by 2023 to the outside camps of the Dachau concentration camp is an example of the overall social tendency to displace these dark chapters.

The actors express the diverse emotions of the victims, including strength, bewilderness, horror and anger, authentically. These services, supplemented by the work of Miriam Busch on stage and costumes as well as other creative colleagues, ensure that the piece offers more than just entertainment. It is a call to think - both about the past and about the constant need to preserve historical knowledge.

Overall, the piece takes 1 hour and 50 minutes and takes place without a break. In this way, the audience is given space to let the emotional intensity of the treatment of forced labor in the period of National Socialism to be released.