This website is in memory of 86 Jewish women and men. They were born in various European countries, had peaceful childhoods and looked forward to an autonomous future. Many were recently married, some had children; all of them were in the middle of their lives.

But suddenly, the National Socialists stopped the course of their lives. They persecuted Jews not only in Germany, but all throughout Europe. They hunted their victims in their homelands, wherever they lived. Whoever could not save him- or herself suffered death at their hands. Over one million murders in Auschwitz alone.

Only a few of those who were deported to Auschwitz had the the fortune to leave the camp again. In early August 1943, 29 women and 57 men held on to their hopes of surviving as they left the camp to go to Alsace. However, their fate had already been sealed long ago. SS anthropologists had selected them to be killed in the concentration camp Natzweiler-Struthof (Alsace). Skeletons were to be prepared from their corpses, to be used at the Reich University in Strasbourg, in research that was ideologically motivated by race.

The murders were completed, though not the exhibition. The mortal remains of those murdered were placed in a mass grave at the Jewish cemetery in Strasbourg-Cronenbourg after the liberation of Strasbourg.

These 86 people should not be forgotten. That is my main concern, for which I would like to visualize their biographies here on this web page.

Hans-Joachim Lang