With the ‘Fundamental Decree on the Preventive Fight against Crime by the Police’ of 14 December 1937, the criminal police in the German Reich was authorised to arrest people without a court order and at its own discretion and to commit them to a concentration camp for an unlimited period of time.
With ‘preventive custody’ [Vorbeugungshaft], the criminal police had an instrument of repression at its disposal that corresponded to ‘protective custody’ [Schutzhaft], which only the Gestapo could order. The decree also provided the formal basis for the committal of thousands of Sinti and Roma to concentration camps; the deportations to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp were also based on preventive custody.
Origin
Under National Socialism, the criminal police was intended not only to solve crimes, but also to actively bring about a ‘Volksgemeinschaft without criminals’ (Patrick Wagner). The criminal biologists’ notion of ‘born criminals’, who were to be subjected to preventive police measures even before committing a criminal offence, thus moved to the forefront of police activity. Although such ideas had already existed before 1933, they could gain no purchase in the democratic Weimar Republic.
Early in the regime, the ‘Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals and on Measures for Security and Correction’ of 24 November 19331Reichsgesetzblatt Part I, 17 November 1933, No. 133, 995–999. opened up more far-reaching sanctions for the police and courts than before.2Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher, 193–198; Hörath, „Asoziale“ und „Berufsverbrecher“, 123–127. The ‘preventive fight against crime’ was intended to give the criminal police even greater room for manoeuvre.
The concept was largely developed by Detective Chief Superintendent Paul Werner (1900–1970), deputy head of the newly created Reich Criminal Police Office (RKPA) on 26 July 1937. Measures already tried and tested in Prussia–systematic surveillance and preventive custody–were extended to the entire Reich and the target group was significantly expanded.3On the pioneering role of the Prussian State Criminal Police Office in Berlin, see Hauser, Die Berliner Kriminalpolizei. The decree created the conditions for the ‘consistent translation of criminological theory into executive practice’.4Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher, 259 f, quote 270. The RKPA had the authority to issue directives.
The Decree and the Guidelines
The decree issued on 14 December 19375The Reich and Prussian Minister of the Interior, Pol. S-Kr. 3 No. 1682/37 – 2098, 14 December 1937 concerning the preventive fight against crime by the police, taking into account the amendments of 23 January 1941 and 8 April 1942, in RSHA, Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung, 41–44. was formally based on Section 1 of the Reich President’s Decree on the ‘Protection of the People and the State’ of 28 February 1933, the so-called Reichstag Fire Decree, which had suspended fundamental civil rights. The decree and the corresponding guidelines issued on 4 April 19386Reich Criminal Police Office, Tgb. No. RKPA 6001 250/38, 4 April 1938, Richtlinien des Reichskriminalpolizeiamtes über die Durchführung der vorbeugenden Verbrechensbekämpfung in der Neufassung vom 8.4.42 unter Berücksichtigung der zu RKPA. V A 2 No. 451/42, in ibid., 65–78. described the procedures and the groups of people who were to be primarily targeted with ‘preventive fight against crime’ measures.
In places with a state or municipal criminal police, the criminal police offices were responsible for initiating systematic surveillance or preventive custody; otherwise the local constabulary or gendarmerie where the person concerned was living had responsibility. Confirmation from the RKPA was required before systematic surveillance was initiated in special cases, and in all cases of preventive custody. The RKPA also determined the camp to which the prisoners were to be sent.
The validity of the basic decree was extended to annexed Austria on 26 July 1938,7The Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior, S-Kr. 3 No. 1137/38, 26 July 1938, concerning the preventive fight against crime by the police. In Ibid, 86. to the annexed Sudetenland on 4 December 1938,8Ders., S-Kr. 3 No. 2405/38, 4 December 1938, concerning the preventive fight against crime by the police. In ibid., 107. to the ‘incorporated eastern territories’ (i.e. the annexed parts of Poland) on 30 September 1940,9The Reich Minister of the Interior, Pol. S V B No. 1356/40, 30 September 1940, concerning the preventive fight against crime by the police. In ibid, 204. on 9 July 1941 to annexed Alsace,10Leroy, Théophile. “Alsace and Lorraine.“ In Encyclopaedia of the Nazi Genocide of the Sinti and Roma in Europe. Ed. by Karola Fings, Research Centre on Antigypsyism at Heidelberg University, Heidelberg 11 February 2025. on 9 March 1942 to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,11With retroactive effect from 1 January 1942, see Beck, Aletta. “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.“ In Encyclopaedia of the Nazi Genocide of the Sinti and Roma in Europe. Ed. by Karola Fings, Research Centre on Antigypsyism at Heidelberg University, Heidelberg 19 December 2024. On 20 September, the Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia had already declared the validity of the decree for “lawbreakers of German nationality“ and “lawbreakers of non-German nationality“, provided they had been convicted by German courts. Cf. the Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia, Order on the Preventive Fight against Crime by the Police in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, 20 September 1940, RSHA V B 1 No. 1296/40, in RSHA, Preventive Fight against Crime, 202; implementation directive of 27 February 1941 in ibid., 222; extension of jurisdiction to ‘asocials‘ of 11 November 1941 in ibid., 261. on 2 April 1942 to occupied Luxembourg12The Chief of the Civil Administration in Luxembourg (ed.), Verordnungsblatt für Luxemburg, No. 24, 14 April 1942, Anordnung über die Einführung kriminalpolizeilicher Vorschriften in Luxemburg vom 2. April 1942 (RSHA V A 2 Allg. Nr. 3728), reprinted in ibid., 281. and on 8 May 1942 to annexed Lorraine.13The Reich Governor of Westmark and Chief of the Civil Administration in Lorraine, Ia Pol. I/Tgb. No. 729/42, 8 May 1942, concerning preventive fight against crime (RSHA V A 2 Allg. No. 3729), reprinted in ibid., 288.
The regulations remained in force until the end of the war; they were amended only with a view to simplifying procedures. Far-reaching persecution measures were ordered on the basis of the decree. The RKPA, affiliated to the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) as Office V in 1939, published these as a 370-page ‘Collection of decrees and other provisions issued in the field of the preventive fight against crime’ in 1943.14RSHA, Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung. This collection also contains most of the RKPA decrees explicitly directed against Sinti and Roma.
‘Systematic Surveillance’
According to the decree of 14 December 1937, ‘professional criminals’ (‘those who have made crime their trade and live or have lived wholly or partly from the proceeds of their crimes’) and ‘habitual criminals’ (‘those who have repeatedly committed the same or similar offences out of criminal urges or inclinations’) could be placed under ‘systematic surveillance’ (‘planmäßige Überwachung’, PLÜ) [AI1(1)a and b]. The PLÜ was always to be ordered against those released from preventive custody [AI2]. A further passage extended the PLÜ to ‘very special exceptional cases’ if they were considered essential ‘for the protection of the Volksgemeinschaft’ [AI3].
No fewer than 20 conditions could be attached to the PLÜ [BI1(1)a to u], each of which was applied on a case-by-case basis. These included the requirements not to leave the place of permanent or temporary residence without police permission, to stay in one’s home at night, to hand in the keys to one’s home and to report changes of residence or workplace immediately. Visits to restaurants, driving a vehicle, drinking alcohol and keeping animals could also be prohibited. There was also an obligation to look for work.
The PLÜ was not limited in time, but after twelve months it had to be reviewed to assess whether it was still necessary [BI2(1) and (2)]. The decision to cancel the PLÜ lay with the criminal police offices, with the RKPA only reserving the right to decide in cases as per [AI3].
‘Preventive Custody’
According to the decree, ‘professional or habitual criminals’ could be taken into preventive custody if they had violated the conditions of the PLÜ or had committed a criminal offence or had been sentenced to at least three terms of imprisonment of at least six months [AII1(a) to (c)]; persons who were considered to be a ‘danger to the general public’ because of a ‘serious offence committed’ [AII1(d)]; persons who ‘without being professional or habitual criminals endanger[ed] the general public through their asocial behaviour’ [AII1(e)]; people who made no or obviously false statements about their person or were suspected of wanting to cover up criminal offences or commit them under a false name [AII1(f)]. In the case of foreigners who were eligible for preventive custody, the possibility of deportation was to be explored; stateless persons were to be taken into ‘pre-expulsion custody in a concentration camp’ [AII3].
Imprisonment was to be carried out ‘in closed reform and labour camps’ or ‘in any other way’ by order of the RKPA. It was only in the guidelines of 4 April 1938 that the ‘reform and labour camps’ were explicitly named as concentration camps. The duration of imprisonment (with the exception of the group of persons under AII1(f)) was indefinite (‘as long as its purpose requires’) [BIIa1]. Relatives of the detainees who were in need of support were to be reported to the responsible office of the National Socialist Welfare Organisation (NSV) [BIIa2]. A detention review was to be carried out after twelve months at the earliest and after two years at the latest [BIIa3]. If release was an option, it had to be checked in advance whether the person to be released could be assigned a job [BIIb].
The RKPA was the highest authority to decide on a possible release; if the prison term exceeded four years, the decision lay solely with Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) [BIII3].
‘Asocials’ as a New Type of Offender and Target Group
In the guidelines of 4 April 1938, the police apparatus was sworn to the task of ‘preventive defence against all endeavours that endanger the people and the state’ [preamble]. In addition to ‘professional and habitual criminals’ and ‘people who are a danger to the public’, who had always been the focus of the criminal police, ‘asocials’ were explicitly named as a special target group for preventive custody [BI para. 7]. This term was used to describe a new type of offender who was now to be dealt with by police measures.
Arthur Nebe (1894–1945), the head of the RKPA, was convinced that ‘asocials’ were the root of all evil. In a programmatic article on the development of the German criminal police, he emphasised that the fight was particularly aimed at the ‘asocial elements, in which criminality ultimately has its roots, and from which it draws its strength and is replenished.’15Arthur Nebe. “Aufbau der deutschen Kriminalpolizei.“ In Kriminalistik 12 (1938), issue 1, 4–8, quote 4 f, quoted from Wildt, An Uncompromising Generation, 182. The National Socialist criminal police now targeted the sub-proletarian milieu, which had already been demonised as a ‘breeding ground for criminality’ before 1933.16Wagner, “Kriminalprävention qua Massenmord,“ 386.
This group of people was now defined in the guidelines as follows: ‘A person is considered asocial if he or she shows that he or she does not want to fit into the community through behaviour that is contrary to the interests of the community, even if not criminal.’ It was further explained: ‘Accordingly, the following, for example, are asocial: a) Persons who, by committing minor but repeated offences against the law, refuse to conform to the order that is taken for granted in a National Socialist state (e.g. beggars, vagrants [Gypsies], prostitutes, drunkards, persons afflicted with infectious diseases, especially venereal diseases, who evade the measures of the health authorities); b) persons, regardless of any previous convictions, who evade their duty to work and leave it to the general public to provide their livelihood (e.g. work-shy, work-refusers, drunkards)’ [BI para. 9]. This broad definition enabled access to all persons considered undesirable.
Patrick Wagner (born 1961) situates the extension of the ‘preventive fight against crime’ to those classified as ‘asocial’ in a ‘broad trend towards the radicalisation of Nazi racial policies, from antisemitism to the persecution of Gypsies to racial hygiene’.17Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher, 278. The RKPA received decisive impetus from Werner Best (1903–1989), who had drafted the outlines of a völkisch social policy within the Gestapo,18Ibid, 264; see Herbert, Best, 163–180. and Robert Ritter (1901–1951), head of the Racial Hygiene Research Unit (RHF), which had been in existence since 1936. Ritter was not only acquainted with both Nebe and Werner, but was also friends with them. Paul Werner, at that time still head of the Baden criminal police, had provided Ritter with police documents for the research on his habilitation thesis ‘Ein Menschenschlag’ [A breed of man], published in 1937, and he drew on Ritter when it came to the ‘necessity for a scientific approach’ to the ‘preventive fight against crime’.19Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher, 273 f; Wagner, “Kriminalprävention qua Massenmord,“ 384–389.
Ritter was by no means the only person to introduce racial hygiene concepts into the discourse of the criminal police, which was aligned with the racial policies of the Nazi regime. However, he was the one who, thanks to his personal and professional proximity to the top management of the criminal police, had a direct influence and was uniquely emphatic in combining the fight against ‘asocials’ with the fight against ‘Gypsies’.
Ritter believed that his habilitation thesis had provided evidence that the ‘Yenish people’, who had ‘gradually settled down’ over the centuries, had formed ‘nests of asocials’, which had ‘simultaneously become places of refuge for Gypsies and criminals’.20Ritter, “Die Asozialen, ihre Vorfahren und ihre Nachkommen,“ 149. According to Ritter, these ‘nests of asocials and hereditary inferiors’ were not only the ‘breeding grounds of crime’, but also the ‘biological breeding grounds’ from which the ‘asocials and born criminals’ emerged;21Ritter, “Die Aufgaben der Kriminalbiologie,“ 39. he described this group elsewhere as the ‘shapeless and characterless Lumpenproletariat’.22Ritter, “Die Zigeunerfrage,“ 15. Ritter wanted to tackle the ‘Gypsy question’ as the ‘first and most easily solved sub-problem’ of the ‘asocial question’ within the framework of the RHF.23Reiter, Das Reichsgesundheitsamt, 357.
The collaboration with Ritter was attractive to the RKPA inasmuch as he claimed that he could scientifically substantiate the ‘biologically conditioned character of asociality’24Ritter, “Die Asozialen, ihre Vorfahren und ihre Nachkommen,“ 139.—and thus also help to legitimise the ‘preventive fight against crime’. It was probably even more important that Ritter always offered ‘practical solutions’ to the criminal police.
He regularly emphasised this aspect of his work to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [German Research Foundation] and had letters of recommendation issued by the RKPA. This apparently had the desired effect, as Ritter was able to secure uninterrupted funding from 1937 to 1944, for which he was granted a large proportion of the funds earmarked for ‘research on asocials and criminal biology’.25Cf. Cottebrune, “Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft,“ 372.
The label ‘asocial’ eventually amalgamated into a collective term that encompassed those with previous convictions and those in prison as well as those stigmatised for racist or socio-racist26The term, coined by the historian Gisela Bock, is used here following the explanations of Oliver Gaida and Alyn Šišić to describe the “biologically based devaluation, exclusion and persecution due to assumed or actually existing social situations or socially undesirable behaviour“. Gaida et al., Im Zugriff von Fürsorge und Polizei, 8. reasons in equal measure, thus giving the Nazi persecution apparatus great leeway. With the agreement reached on 18 September 1942 between Justice Minister Otto Thierack (1889–1946) and Heinrich Himmler on the ‘transfer of asocial prisoners’, around 15,600 men and around 1,700 women were transferred from prisons and penitentiaries to concentration camps by mid-1943 without the involvement of the courts.27Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher, 336 f.
Institutional Anchoring
With the reorganisation of the criminal police on 1 October 1936, the Prussian State Criminal Police Office headed by Arthur Nebe—renamed Reich Criminal Police Office on 16 July 1937—was given specialist responsibility for all German criminal police departments.
Department I (Division I A) was responsible for ‘preventive custody and systematic surveillance’, while Department II (Division II B) was in charge of the ‘Reich Central Office for Combating the Gypsy Nuisance’, which remained in Munich until 1 October 1938.28Reichsministerialblatt der inneren Verwaltung (RMBliV) 1936, circular decree on the reorganisation of the Reich Criminal Police of the Reich Minister of the Interior of 20 September 1936. The relocation of the “Reich Headquarters“ from Munich to Berlin did not take place until 1 October 1938; until then, the Munich “Gypsy Policing Office“ continued to use its old letterheads, see Luchterhandt, Der Weg nach Birkenau, 102. The two departments were successively linked more closely in organisational terms, especially after the RKPA was incorporated into the RSHA. Still assigned to the ‘S.-Kr. 3’ department in 1938, ‘prevention’ became an independent Group V B in the RKPA in 1939/40 and was divided into three departments: ‘Professional and Habitual Criminals’ (B1), ‘Asocials and Gypsies’ (B2) and Criminal Research (B3).29Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 114; Bundesarchiv Berlin (BArch), RD 19/29, Jahrbuch Amt V (RKPA) des RSHA 1939/1940, 44. From September 1939, the RKPA had its headquarters in an ‘aryanised’ building at Werderscher Markt 5-6 in Berlin.
The RSHA’s organisation plan from March 1941 reflects the final restructuring, which remained in effect until the end of the war. The RKPA, which was affiliated to the RSHA as Office V, was subordinate to Group V A (‘Criminal Policy and Prevention’) headed by Paul Werner, and was responsible for Department V A 2 (‘Prevention’) with all areas of the ‘Preventive Fight against Crime’, including the ‘Reich Central Office for Combating the Gypsy Nuisance’.30Cf. Landesarchiv Berlin, B Rep. 057-01 No. 368, Geschäftsverteilungsplan des RSHA, 1 March 1941; Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 114.
Also in 1941, Paul Werner ensured that Ritter, in addition to heading the RHF, was also given the management of the newly created ‘Criminal Biology Institute of the Security Police’ within the Reich Criminal Police Office on 21 December 1941. The institute was to advise the criminal police on all fundamental questions of criminal biology and set up an ‘archive of asocials and criminals’. Its remit also included the assessment of ‘juvenile Gemeinschaftsfremde [people alien to the community]’ in connection with committals to concentration camps for young people.31For the following, see Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher, 384–93; Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 154 f.
Instrument in the Persecution of Sinti and Roma
While the vast majority of the Jewish population was sent to concentration camps using the Gestapo’s protective custody, Sinti and Roma were subjected to preventive custody by the criminal police.
The first major wave of arrests of Sinti and Roma on the basis of preventive custody took place in June 1938 as part of ‘Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich’, which affected several hundred Sinti and Roma—one in eight male adults.32Fings, “Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich.” The arrests were used to recruit forced labourers for the Schutzstaffel (SS) operations in the concentration camps. At the same time, a deterrent effect was to be achieved on the population as a whole in order to force higher productivity in the face of a labour market that was stretched by the armaments boom.
While only men were affected by ‘Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich’ and Sinti or Roma only made up a small proportion of those sent to concentration camps, the next ‘action’ in the ‘preventive fight against crime’ in June 1939 exclusively affected Austrian Roma from Burgenland: 553 men were sent to Dachau and 440 women to Ravensbrück.33BArch, RD 19/29, Yearbook Amt V (RKPA) of the RSHA 1939/1940, 5. In the decree sent by the RKPA to the Vienna criminal police on 5 June 1939, the blanket order for preventive custody was justified by the fact that these were ‘work-shy’ and ‘particularly asocial Gypsies and Gypsy Mischlinge’.34RKPA, Tgb. No. IA 2 d 6001/430.39, 5 June 1939, Vorbeugende Maßnahmen zu Bekämpfung der Zigeunerplage im Burgenland, in RSHA, Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung, 134vr.
With the Immobilisation Decree of 17 October 1939, all Sinti and Roma were effectively placed under ‘systematic surveillance’: As soon as Sinti and Roma were registered by the criminal police, they were no longer allowed to leave their place of permanent or temporary residence under threat of preventive custody.35RSHA, Tgb. No. RKPA. 149/1939 -g- , 17 October 1939, Gypsy registration, in Ibid., 156vr.
Another collective persecution measure was directed against Sinti and Roma women who had been punished for fortune-telling or were even suspected of it. According to the order of 20 November 1939, these women were to be taken into preventive custody as they were considered a ‘source of danger to public safety’.36RSHA V (RKPA.) No. 6001/474.39, 20 November 1939, Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung durch die Polizei, in RSHA, Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung, 162. Quoted from Mitteilungsblatt des RKPA, January 1940, 1, also reprinted in Ibid., 369r.
With the ‘immobilisation’ and preventive custody, the criminal police had powerful means at its disposal to commit Sinti and Roma to concentration camps even for minor offences. They made use of this in hundreds of cases, partly because the deportations of all Sinti and Roma from the Reich announced at the beginning of the war initially failed to materialise, apart from the deportations to the General Government and the Litzmannstadt ghetto in 1940 and 1941.37Numerous examples in Fings et al., Rassismus, Lager, Völkermord, 237–255.
The racial policy dimension of preventive custody for Sinti and Roma is particularly evident in the deportations that began in February 1943 in accordance with the Auschwitz Decree. Formally, the children, women and men deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau were taken into preventive custody before their deportation; in order to minimise the administrative burden, the RKPA did not confirm their detention.
‘Gemeinschaftsfremde’
Robert Ritter had expressly welcomed the RKPA’s ‘preventive fight against crime’ as ‘a first step’. However, the measures did not go far enough for him: in addition to the PLÜ and imprisonment, he called for the rigorous ‘prevention of the reproduction of members of asocial families’, i.e. state-ordered sterilisation.38Ritter, “Die Asozialen, ihre Vorfahren und ihre Nachkommen,” 153 f.
The implementation of this demand gradually took shape in 1943/44. A further expansion of the target group and a radicalisation of the measures had been discussed at the highest level since 1939; Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942), head of the RSHA, worked on the draft of a law on ‘Gemeinschaftsfremde’ [people alien to the community], which was to replace the decree on ‘preventive fight against crime’. Ritter and Werner were also involved.39Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher, 384–393. The term ‘Gemeinschaftsfremde’ was now to replace ’asocials’ to characterise all those within the ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ whose genetic make-up was considered harmful.
In the last surviving draft of the law of 20 March 1944, the definition of this group was so broad that any undesirable behaviour could be understood as ‘alien to the community’. In addition to the PLÜ and preventive custody, forced sterilisation and the handing over of ‘Gemeinschaftsfremde’ from the courts to the police were provided for, meaning that the agreement reached between Thierack and Himmler in September 1942 was to become the rule. The plan was for the law to come into force on 1 April 1945, but the advance of the Allies prevented this.
Impact Beyond 1945
In the concentration camps, those interned as ‘professional criminals’ were marked with a green triangle, while those stigmatised as ‘asocials’ were marked with a black triangle on their clothing. By the end of the war, the RKPA had ordered the committal of some 110,000 people to concentration camps, around 30,000 of them Sinti and Roma.40Wagner, “Kriminalprävention qua Massenmord,” 379.
As the vast majority of criminal police officers were able to return to their previous positions after the end of the war, it was easy for them to fend off the charges made by survivors and to portray the criminal police as an institution that was not connected to the Nazi system of injustice. This was accompanied by the assertion that the victims of the ‘preventive fight against crime’ had been imprisoned solely because they were criminals—and thus for reasons that should still be regarded as lawful.
For decades, this narrative determined the public and official view of those who were sent to concentration camps under the stigma of ‘asocials’ or ‘professional criminals’. Following a number of initiatives, the civil rights movement of German Sinti and Roma finally succeeded in 1982 in having the persecution of Sinti and Roma recognised as racially motivated genocide by the Federal Republic of Germany.
The other victims of the criminal police, who were a very heterogeneous group, were unable to organise collectively or join the organisations of concentration camp survivors because they were socially marginalised.41Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher, 406. Historians only began to take an interest in this group of victims in the 1990s.
A public discussion around the recognition of the concentration camp victims who had been previously ignored began in Germany thanks to the engagement of a citizens’ initiative launched by relatives and academics. The initiative started a petition on 14 January 2018 and succeeded in getting the German Bundestag to decide on 13 February 2020 to ‘recognise those persecuted by the National Socialists as “asocials” and “professional criminals”’. The draft resolution stated, among other things: ‘No one was rightly interned, tortured or murdered in a concentration camp.’42German Bundestag, 19th electoral term, printed matter 19/14342 of 22 October 2019, motion by the CDU/CSU and SPD parliamentary groups, 3. At the same time, the Bundestag commissioned an exhibition on this group of victims. This was developed by the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial and presented in Berlin on 10 October 2024 under the title ‘The Disavowed. Victims of National Socialism 1933 – 1945 – Today’.43See https://www.die-verleugneten.de/en [accessed: 26/03/2025].
In order to further promote public discussion and the remembrance of the victims, relatives of those persecuted as ‘asocials’ or ‘professional criminals’ founded the ‘Association for the Remembrance of the Disavowed Victims of National Socialism’ (vevon) in Nuremberg on 20 January 2023.44See https://www.dieverleugneten-vevon.de [accessed: 26/03/2025]. The first chairman is Prof Dr Frank Nonnenmacher (born 1940), whose uncle Ernst Nonnenmacher (1908–1989) had survived the Flossenbürg and Sachsenhausen concentration camps.
In Austria, this group of victims was recognised on 12 June 2024 by an amendment to the Victims’ Welfare Act of 1947 passed by the National Council.45266th session of the National Council, 12 June 2024, in Parliament Austria, https://www.parlament.gv.at/gegenstand/XXVII/I/2588?selectedStage=105 [accessed: 08/04/2025].
