It’s been two years since the Bundestag finally officially recognized those persecuted by the Nazis as “asocial” and “professional criminals” as a victim group. The social scientist Frank Nonnenmacher draws a critical interim balance.
der Freitag: Mr. Nonnenmacher, 75 years after the end of the war, the Bundestag officially recognized “asocial” and “career criminals” as victims of the Nazis. Were those affected still alive?
Frank Nonnenmacher: Yes, some of those affected have noticed.
Her uncle, Ernst Nonnenmacher, was no longer able to witness it.
My uncle was in a concentration camp for four years. At first he had a black triangle – a triangle of fabric on the left breast of the prisoner’s clothing – and was therefore considered a so-called asocial. He was later “cornered” and henceforth marked with the green triangle as a “career criminal”.
Why did the Nazis target her uncle?
Ernst, born in 1908, grew up as the son of a single mother in Stuttgart under the most difficult circumstances. His little brother, my father, came to the orphanage. Ernst was forced to steal to have something to eat. He became a kind of petty criminal early on, always moving in the lowest hierarchical level of society. He was imprisoned for minor offenses such as theft, begging and receiving stolen goods. After his last release, the Nazis took him straight to a concentration camp in 1941 as a “preventive measure”, without charge, without a court judgement. First he was in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, assigned to the hardest work in the quarry. In 1942 he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
He survived the terror. Did he talk about the persecution after the war?
He initially tried to get official recognition as a person persecuted by the Nazis. The application was rejected by the authorities on the grounds that he was right in the concentration camp. That was in 1946. From then on he remained silent for decades: when asked what he did during the war, he only said that he had been on the Eastern Front. He knew that in the post-war years there was no longer any demand. It wasn’t until I almost urged him to tell me how he experienced the Nazi era in the late 1960s that he started talking about it. At that time there was a great deal of social silence – not only from perpetrators, but also from unrecognized victims.
Some victim groups had been able to make their voices heard. There was no association of people who were persecuted as asocial or professional criminals.
Those affected were also further stigmatized in post-war society. The unemployed, criminals and so-called asocial people were not respected. Those who were interned in the concentration camps with green or black triangles were ashamed. I spoke to many descendants who only found out decades later that their parents or grandparents were being persecuted.
Is shame and ongoing discrimination a reason that official recognition as a victim group came so late?
Before and after fascism, there was a broad societal conviction that there were inferior, i.e. antisocial parts of society. This stigmatization prevented the solidarity of other groups of victims. For example, homosexuals and Sinti and Roma had to fight for their recognition for a shameful long time. Because anyone who had been in a concentration camp, for whatever reason, was considered disreputable by many, precisely because many found it justified that people who were considered criminals were also interned in the camps. That was reason enough for the political ex-prisoners to distance themselves from “criminal” and “asocial” fellow prisoners.
Frank Nonnenmacher, 77, Emeritus Professor for Didactics of Social Sciences at the University of Frankfurt a. M., has the book about his uncle and his father, the sculptor Gustav Nonnenmacher YOU had it better than ME. Two brothers in the 20th century released
Does the performance ideology also play a role, which not only has a strong influence on today’s society, but also on society in post-war Germany?
The social prejudices against people whose everyday biographies deviate from the norm, who are considered antisocial, are still widespread today. We live in a society that systematically produces poverty, which many do not want to admit. Therefore, stereotypes against people at the bottom of the social hierarchy fall on fertile ground. The fact that people who steal become criminals, prostitute themselves, often act out of social self-defense is not seen.
How many people who were stigmatized as “asocial” or “professional criminals” fell victim to the Nazis?
There is only rudimentary research on this, because even in science, the topic has hardly occupied anyone for decades. However, estimates assume that 70,000 people were interned. When it comes to the number of dead, reliable figures are only available for individual concentration camps. It is said that about a third of the interned “Grünwinkler” were murdered in Sachsenhausen, and more than half in Mauthausen.
The Bundestag had linked the recognition with plans to work through the history of those stigmatized. A traveling constellation was commissioned, and the federal government was asked to research biographies. How do you rate these projects?
First of all, it is positive that the Bundestag resolution of February 13, 2020 exists. It’s good that the Minister of State for Culture and Media has provided 1.5 million euros for the creation of a traveling exhibition. This is in the works. Thanks to the recognition, “Grünwinkler” and “Schwarzwinkler” can now officially apply for compensation. But this regulation comes much too late.
How high is the number of people who have submitted an application for compensation since the Bundestag decision?
It’s zero. The few who are still alive are very old and no longer willing or able to make such an application. One could cynically say that the Federal Republic has saved itself a lot of money by taking so long to get official recognition. Another problem with the resolution is that an important group of people affected is not named.
Which?
The persons in preventive detention are missing from the Bundestag decision. These are long-time convicts who, according to a decision by Heinrich Himmler and Otto Georg Thierack, were taken from prison from 1942 because of “insufficient judicial verdicts” and were to be “annihilated through work” in the concentration camps. They too were given the green triangle in the concentration camp. Many of them were Polish citizens, whose reasons for imprisonment were often trivial. Take Emil Madej, for example: He had hidden an old bayonet under his bed, was denounced and sentenced to ten years in prison for endangering public safety. In December 1942 he was taken to the Mauthausen concentration camp with other people in preventive detention to be exterminated through work. He barely survived a month. Although the specific fate of those persecuted under “Polish Criminal Law” was pointed out in the committee meetings of the Bundestag, these victims remain invisible. That’s a serious deficit.
What about the implementation of the Bundestag decision?
In the resolution, the executive is asked to make funds available, firstly for the lack of research into the biographies of the hitherto ignored victims of National Socialism, and secondly for research into the persecution authorities. Neither has happened so far.
Could the change in government have a positive effect on the work-up?
I’m counting on Claudia Roth, the new Minister of State for Culture. She was one of the first to sign the appeal that asked the Bundestag in 2018 to recognize the former concentration camp prisoners with the black and green triangles as official victims of National Socialism. Without this appeal we would probably still be waiting for recognition today. In this respect, it would be surprising if Ms. Roth did not now take the initiative to provide the necessary funds. It’s time.
Otherwise, is the fate of the “asocial” and “professional criminals” in danger of being forgotten?
I would not go so far. Fortunately, there are young researchers who have been dealing with the topic for about ten years. And the descendants of those affected are also more concerned with the topic, because the shame and stigmatization that accompanied many former concentration camp prisoners throughout their lives is decreasing among the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The processing is kept alive mainly due to individual initiatives and individual commitment. But those who were stigmatized by the Nazis with the green and black triangles are still not systematically and naturally integrated into our culture of remembrance.