Since 1921 the unions and worker’s parties had a shared home at Göttingen, Germany: the Volksheim. Meetings were held there and the organizations had their offices at the building. Also the newspaper Volksblatt of the Social Democratic party (SPD) was printed in a building next to it. This all ended when the Nazis occupied the Volksheim in 1933.
On the 26th of April, 1933 they first occupied the building; from May 2nd on they did it permanently. In the night from May 5th they tortured social democrats and unionists at the cellar of the Volksheim. Afterwards they started to use the building for their own purposes and the library was destroyed during the book burning on Albaniplatz on May 10th, 1933. In 1939 the building was used to incarcerate foreign prisoners and it was destroyed by bombs in November 1944.
“Hier stand des Gewerkschaftshaus “Volksheim”.
Zentrum der Göttinger Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik.
1933 wurde es von den Nationalsozialisten beschlagnahmt, im II. Weltkrieg zerstört.
Seine Geschichte mahnt gegen Faschismus und Krieg.1. Mai 1990″
To remember these dark times a stone with a plaque was installed there on May 1st, 1990. I was there on that day as a child together with my father and I remember that the unions returned there every year for a while. Today the stone is in poor condition. The Volksheim has never been rebuilt, now a gas tank is standing at its former location. Only in 1958 the SPD could move in again at the neighboring building where the Volksblatt was once printed.
Volksheim-Gedenkstein
Maschmühlenweg
37073 Göttingen
Germany
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