About the exhibition
48 third-graders at the Jewish elementary school in Munich have assembled in the schoolyard with their teacher for a class photo—a snapshot from May 1937. It is a special occasion for the children: the beginning of the new school year is being recorded. Perhaps, for a moment, they can blank out the harsh reality that has defined their lives for several years now. Munich, where Nazism rose to power, has long been hostile to Jews. Yet the children probably do not yet suspect that their lives will soon be violently torn apart.
The photo provides the starting point for an intensive search to find out what happened to them. The exhibition traces the children’s life paths. It investigates their strategies for survival, the routes by which they fled, their experiences of alienation and loss, and their arrival in a new place. It also tells of those who could not flee, fell victim to the Nazis’ annihilation policies and, as despair deepened, held fast to one another. This paves the way for more general questions: What does it mean to be a child in times of inhumanity? How do the loss of home and forced migration shape children? And what longer-term effects do these experiences have on their families?
The exhibition is based on an idea and research by the historians Kristina Milz and Julia Schneidawind. Their work Klassenfoto 1937 was published as a book by C.H. Beck Verlag on September 24, 2026.