Der Fall Shmuel Dancyger - Das jüdische Displaced Persons Zentrum in der Stuttgarter Reinsburgstraße und die tödliche Razzia am 29. März 1946

The 'Lernort Geschichte' (History as a place of learning) is showing historical photos from the Jewish Displaced Persons Center in Stuttgart in the Querungen of the Württembergischer Kunstverein. The exhibition is supported by the Baden-Württemberg Foundation's educational program against anti-Semitism.

Shmuel Dancyger survived the ghetto in Radom, Auschwitz and the death march to Mauthausen. Liberated, in a sanatorium in Paris, he learns that there is a Displaced Persons Center in Stuttgart with many survivors from his home town of Radom. He sets off and the miracle happens. At Reinsburgstraße 197 B, he is able to embrace his wife Regina, daughter Yaffa and son Marek. They too had survived Auschwitz.
A short time later, on 29 March 1946, the Stuttgart police raided the DP center for black market transactions. The operation escalated and Shmuel Dancyger was shot in the head with a police pistol. The photo exhibition investigates the motives and leads to the trail of the suspected gunman.
Photos from March 29, 1946 from Reinsburgstraße in Stuttgart are held in archives in Israel, America and Germany and are being shown here for the first time. The case of the Auschwitz survivor Shmuel Dancyger, who was shot dead in Stuttgart, made headlines around the world at the time. However, a surprising number of photos also document the everyday life of the survivors, who revived a kind of Jewish shtetl in the west of Stuttgart between 1945 and 1949. The photo exhibition at the Württembergischer Kunstverein shows three phases of the Jewish displaced persons of this time: the arrival and everyday life of the concentration camp survivors, as they called themselves, the deadly roundup and the subsequent protests, and, after years of unbearable waiting, finally their departure. Because the Jewish survivors were stuck here, in the country of the perpetrators of all places. Their home had been taken from them, countries such as America and Canada had strict immigration quotas and the state of Israel did not yet exist.
In addition, the Reinsburgstrasse of 1946 is brought to life in a digitalized journey through time. The High Performance Computing Center of the University of Stuttgart offers virtual tours.
The Lernort Geschichte also offers project days for school classes.