NIE WIEDER

NEVER AGAIN is the theme of this year's elective portrait painting course at Pestalozzi-Gymnasium Munich, led by artist and art teacher Gloria Gans. Pupils aged between 10 and 15 were inspired by screenshots from the documentary "Three Minutes - A Lengthening" by Dutch historian Bianca Stigter on the one hand and archive photos from a former forced labor camp in Neuaubing on the other.

The emotional, artistic confrontation with this dark chapter of our history visibly deepened the realization that we should all be on our guard against any exclusionary, racist, hostile tendencies in our country. The students' intense images were created with ink, acrylic or gouache.

The documentary recalls life in the small Polish town of Nasielsk, which was wiped out by the National Socialists. The starting point for the film is a 16 mm film shot by David Kurtz in 1938. Having emigrated from Poland to the USA with his parents at the age of four, he later visited his Polish hometown of Nasielsk as a successful man on a trip to Europe. With his amateur camera, he filmed the Jewish residents of the town, who at the time had no idea what would happen to them just one year later.

The Neuaubing forced labor camp was one of over 400 camps in and around Munich for prisoners of war during the Second World War. Men, women and minors from the Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Italy, the Netherlands and France were housed in barracks under catastrophic conditions and forced to perform slave labor in the Reichsbahn repair works in Neuaubing.

The state-run Pestalozzi-Gymnasium Munich is one of four arts high schools in Munich. The school is known for its focus on the fine arts and for its choirs, bands, orchestras, theater and musical performances.

Gloria Gans studied painting and graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. She is a freelance artist with a studio at the Neuhauser Künstlerhof and an art teacher at various institutions.