Museum of your Memory
In October 1946 several thousand German specialists working aeronautical engineering were forcibly relocated, along with their families, to the Soviet Union, where they were obliged to work for the Soviet aviation industry. This resettlement was part of German reparations following the Second World War. The specialists lived with their families near Moscow for years before they were allowed to return to Germany. Some of them never returned. My grandparents lived with their four children for eight years in the village of Podberezye.
I set off in search of their memories. What I found was my own reality – independent of the past and distorted by media, but, maybe, possessing its own truth. In Museum of your Memory I have combined my photographs of contemporary Podberezye with film stills from Russian propaganda movies from the Stalinist era.
Ulrike Schmitz
