Learning with History? Human Rights Education Work with Police Officers in Germany

Abstract

A functioning memorial site since 1999, Villa ten Hompel, the home of a formerindustrialist from the 1920s, can be found at the edge of Münster citycentre in northwest Germany. In 1940 the National Socialist police, headed bythe SS-chief Heinrich Himmler, bought the Villa ten Hompel to use as one oftheir control centres. Until 1944 it was the headquarters of the uniformed policein the military district VI. Up to 60 policemen (and a few policewomen) andcivilian staff members co-ordinated the operation of uniformed police within asingle geographical district known as a "Wehrkreis", which comprised of largeparts of western and northern Germany, including the cities of Cologne, Düsseldorf,Essen, Dortmund and Münster. No fewer than 200,000 police officersand auxiliary police officers served in this Wehrkreis in the 1940s. The Villa tenHompel turned into a location for desk-bound perpetrators. Their bureaucraticactions had consequences for the whole of Europe, in part with murderous results.In examining this site of commemoration, this article analyses how humanrights education for German police officers has come to embrace the topicof police actions during the Nazi epoch.