On 31 July 2022 an event was held to launch the book »Eine ›asoziale‹ Pfälzer Familie. Wie in der NS-Zeit aus einem Sozialfall moralische Minderwertigkeit gemacht wurde« (»An ›Asocial‹ Family from the Palatinate«). I gave a short talk at the event and discussed the book with its author, Alfons L. Ims. It tells the story of his own family.
Shortly before the start of the event, I accompanied Alfons Ims to the Kalkhofen housing estate in Kaiserslautern, where he was born in 1949. This estate was known as the part of town in which primarily poor and marginalised people had to live. The National Socialist authorities often labelled them »asocial« and they were threatened with violence. This was also the case with Alfons Ims’s family. At the event and in the book he described how he began to trace his family’s history.
The questions that arose in the course of his investigations were the same ones that we have dealt with in depth during this project. How should we approach files in which the police or the authorities in charge of welfare, youth or health services describe people as »asocial«, »congenital idiots« and »inferior«? The perspectives of those who were excluded and persecuted in this way are mostly completely absent in these files and they are not documented elsewhere. In some cases, as with Alfons Ims’s family, people were not even able to record their own viewpoint because they were unable to write properly. This makes it all the more important to go through every detail in the files in order to analyse them properly. This is exactly what the author attempts to do in his book »Eine ›asoziale‹ Pfälzer Familie. Wie in der NS-Zeit aus einem Sozialfall moralische Minderwertigkeit gemacht wurde«.
Image: Llux Agentur & Verlag
The efforts Ims has made to piece together the life and suffering of the individual members of his family have been extremely valuable for our exhibition project. His account of how almost his entire family suffered between 1933 and 1945 as a result of the National Socialist concept of hereditary »inferiority« is particularly striking. In concrete terms this meant forced sterilisation and lengthy detention in institutions and homes and the family faced exclusion right from when they lived on a »housing estate for asocials«. In addition, two of the children were at risk of becoming victims of the Nazis’ programme of killing patients in institutional settings. It was only down to luck that they were spared. None of the family members were detained in »preventive police custody« either; in other words, no one from the family was held in a concentration camp. Such internment is often considered to exemplify persecution under National Socialism. However, it is easy to forget the widespread persecution that took place outside the camps. This issue came up in the discussions at the book launch. The question remains: How can we remember the individuals affected by these forms of Nazi persecution?
The sense of shame that persists within the families of such individuals poses a major obstacle to finding out more about their lives. As a result of the exclusion and persecution under National Socialism and the decades in which they were not acknowledged as victims, past injustice continues to have an impact on the present. With our exhibition project we want to encourage people to look into the history of persecution in their own families if they are aware that this might have occurred, and to contact us. You can get in touch via our contact form.
Oliver Gaida
People were defined as »asocial« and faced persecution if they did not fit into the »national community« (»Volksgemeinschaft«) under Nazism. The groups affected were primarily the unemployed, the homeless, prostitutes or non-conformist youth. They were accused of posing a danger to society. The welfare authorities, justice system and police were among the institutions which worked together to persecute these individuals. They created a dense network of surveillance and compulsory measures.