Looking back. Looking ahead. 2020-2025

196   SPEECHES | INSTITUTIONS Institutions ©Municipality of Poing Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Guests, As a representative of the Bavarian Memorial Foundation, it is a particular privilege for me to speak to you here today.We find ourselves in a place of remembrance, mourning and reflection. Our foundation’s core mission is to preserve the memory of the crimes of National Socialism. Yet fulfilling this responsibility means far more than safeguarding large and renowned me- morials such as Dachau or Flossenbürg. It also – and in many ways even more urgently – means attending to smaller, often overlooked places such as Poing, where traces of injustice remain unmistakeably visible. I would therefore like to thank you most sincerely for gather- ing here today in such great numbers. Your presence sends an important and encouraging message from Poing. This message is urgently necessary, as highlighted rather com- pellingly in Mayor Stark’s speech. The Shoah – a crime without historical comparison in terms of its scale and cruelty – must never be forgotten. But re- membrance is not only about looking back. It is about actively remembering our present and future to ensure that the crimes of National Socialism never happen again. This is a responsibility we all share: policymakers, memorial institutions, schools, associations, society as a whole, and each and every one of us. Only when we understand this as a shared mission can we truly make a difference. This makes it all the more important to underline the signifi- cance of researching and revealing the history of former sub- camps and their evacuations – the so-called “death marches” and “death transports” – and to underline the significance of this very place. Dr Jascha März Head of Research Services and Archives  at the Bavarian Memorial Foundation Commemoration of the 80th anniversary of liberation:  Unveiling of memorial plaques in Poing  27 April 2025 Ladies and Gentlemen, This place of remembrance has been here for more than 15 years, and many of you return regularly for our comme­ morative events. You are well acquainted with the historical events. And yet we must recognise the fact that, in many parts of our society, the memory of the crimes of National Socialism is in danger of fading. Knowledge is the only antidote. Poing is not an isolated site of remembrance. It is part of a much larger historical picture. And this is clear! Appropriate   remembrance of the victims must always be paired with knowledge of the crimes committed against them. Only those who know what truly happened – what people suffered through persecution, imprisonment and forced labour – can give real meaning to the phrase “Never again!”. Allow me, then, to offer a brief overview of how this place fits into the broader concentration camp system. During the SecondWorldWar, the Nazi regime deployed hundreds of thousands of concentration camp prisoners in armaments production. They were meant to compensate for the growing labour shortage caused by expanded conscription into theWehrmacht and the restructuring of the wartime economy. To exploit the forced labour of concentration camp prisoners as efficiently as possible, the earlier practice of establishing production sites at the concentration camps themselves was replaced from 1943 onwards by building subcamps directly at existing armament facilities. There, concentration camp pris- oners were forced to perform extremely harsh and life-threat- ening labour in pursuit of the proclaimed “final victory”. In the final phase of the war, more than 1,000 subcamps were established in the immediate vicinity of armaments factories and sites where production was being moved underground. As many of these subcamps were makeshift solutions, living and