SUSPEKT - Landscape of Crimes

SUSPEKT – Landscape of Crimes is an interactive digital experience that makes the hidden network of Nazi crime sites visible. Created in collaboration with the Buchenwald Memorial Foundation, the Friedenstein Foundation Gotha, and the Arolsen Archives, the project opens new pathways for digital remembrance culture – profound, visually powerful, and strikingly relevant today.

Users explore locations absent from tourist maps – satellite camps, deportation routes, Gestapo cells, and sites of forced labor. The "Landscape of Crimes" unfolds as a digitally accessible and interconnected web of violence.

Original documents from the Arolsen Archives and other historical sources form the foundation of SUSPEKT – Landscape of Crimes. Transport lists, index cards, letters, photographs, and camp plans illustrate the bureaucratic machinery behind the crimes. These materials are not mere supplements – they are central tools of insight. They reveal the precise, administrative, and deeply inhumane mechanisms of Nazi terror. Every document represents an individual fate, whose overwhelming number becomes strikingly tangible.

The voices of victims – not perpetrators – are at the heart of this project. Testimonies from survivors, letters, courtroom statements, and personal memories are subtly embedded in the digital landscape. Quotations are contextually framed and presented without dramatization, focusing instead on clarity and dignity. The goal is not performative empathy but genuine understanding of historical structures of violence.

Inspired by the principles of serious games – but without playfulness – SUSPEKT guides users through the terrain using questions, symbolic decisions, and investigative tasks. It’s not about entertainment, but about insight: Which documents are connected? What crimes happened where? Interactive elements and symbolic actions support an explorative approach to complex historical contexts – fostering active reflection.

SUSPEKT is seamlessly integrated into the Arolsen Archives’ educational platform and expands it through a modular, interactive format. Via an API (technical interface), the module is connected to the main platform, allowing synchronization of content, user actions, and learning progress. This enables SUSPEKT to function both as a standalone experience and as part of a broader educational environment – in schools, political education, or memorial site programs.