From Forced Labourer to Concentration Camp Prisoner
My Grandfather’s Story
This short film reconstructs the fragments of my grandfather Georgiy Vystavkin’s life: a Ukrainian taken to Germany as a forced laborer and held in four Nazi camps
and historical evidence
Why do some histories stay untold, and what public responsibility do we carry for them? The film approaches this through the forced labourers deported to Germany, whose stories were silenced by shame and marginalization, both in their own societies and in how the Second World War is publicly remembered.
Because it belongs to millions and is almost never told. The two million Ukrainians deported to Germany as forced labourers were silenced by shame and suspicion, and their memory was lost before it could become public. Recovering one life shows what that silence cost, and why, in a time of renewed war and deportation, these stories still matter.
Watch the film
The embedded work is the contributor’s original media. Use the external link to view it directly on its hosting platform.
A family account of forced labour
Daria Vystavkina’s documentary follows her grandfather’s experience, tracing the path from forced labour to imprisonment in the Nazi concentration-camp system. The project combines family memory with wider historical context.
The work of testimony
Personal accounts can reveal how persecution was experienced and remembered while also requiring careful attention to chronology and documentary evidence.
Watch the film
The original film is presented within this exhibition page below. Its recorded images and narration remain part of the author’s project.
Sources & Credits
Original project references, visual sources and creator credits are collected here in one place.
- Creator & project
Daria Vystavkina. Short video. Who Owns Memory? Digital Public Exhibition, First Cycle 2026.
Archival records. Prisoner records and the camp-number index obtained on request from the Arolsen Archives (Bad Arolsen), the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, and the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial. These establish the dates, camps, and prisoner numbers of my grandfather's path through the camp system.
Family archive. Photographs, identity documents on the restoration of his name, and a video recording of my grandfather with his great-grandson.
Press sources. Two Heilbronn newspaper reports on the Kochendorf camp: Angela Groß in Region Heilbronn (2008) and Sandra Weckert in Heilbronner Stimme (2008).
Scholarship. On the Nazi forced-labor system and its scale: Ulrich Herbert, Fremdarbeiter (1985)
Mark Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz (2001)
Spoerer and Fleischhacker, "Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany" (2002). On the Kochendorf salt-mine camp: Klaus Riexinger and Detlef Ernst, Vernichtung durch Arbeit (2003). On Ukrainian forced laborers: Tetiana Pastushenko (Ukrainian Jewish Encounter).
- Visual and media material
Photographs, documents, illustrations, video and audio are attributed through the project text, captions and contributor documentation wherever that information was supplied. This exhibition page does not grant additional reuse permissions.
- Digital exhibition edition
Web presentation adapted for Who Owns Memory? (2026), with layout and language editing. The original contributors retain authorship of their research, interpretation and creative work.