Personnel files Flossenbürg, men

Scope and content

The prisoner personal files contain, among other things (but not all):
- Protective custody orders
- So-called prisoner personnel sheets
- Identification photographs (from CC Flossenbürg, or additionally or exclusively from other concentration camps in which the persons concerned have previously been imprisoned).
- CVs written by the prisoners themselves (handwritten / typewritten)
- So-called ‘Criminal CVs’ with partly detailed documentation of arrests and criminal offences in the 1920s (excerpts from the criminal record). Among them are letters written by local courts and correspondence from various police authorities from the 1920s and 1930s.
- Reports of medical examinations prior to arrest
- Correspondence from affected family members (with replies from the camp commandant) with the aim of getting their relatives released from the camp.
- Reports of the camp commandant to various institutions, including the RSHA, the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt, various state police headquarters.
- Correspondence between other concentration camps and authorities / institutions (from the time before the transfer to CC Flossenbürg)
- Letters from the camp physician regarding examinations in the event of an imminent release from the camp
- ‘Declaration’, signed by the prisoner on the day of his release, concerning, among other things, the obligation to the Nazi state and duty of confidentiality with regard to camp detention. Included is a reference to the place and 'purpose' of the release (entry into the Wehrmacht, etc.).

The files provide insight into the practices of National Socialist persecution, the underlying ideology of the Nazi regime and its partial intertwining with ideas / concepts of criminality from the time of the Weimar Republic. The ideological understanding of an alleged ‘improvement’ of certain prisoner groups through imprisonment in the camp by means of ‘educating’ them to become ‘usable people of the Volksgemeinschaft’ can be reconstructed on the basis of included protective custody warrants in combination with evaluation reports issued by the camp commandant concerning the behavior of a prisoner in the camp with a view to a possible release.

Noteworthy is the partly included correspondence between relatives of the detainees and the camp commandant's office. It often contains detailed information on the professional careers and whereabouts of other family members, as well as references to the political convictions of individuals. The goal - the release of the relative from the camp - must be a central evaluation criterion for the source-critical classification.

Literature:
General information on the legal foundations and historical roots of the persecution of so-called ‘antisocial’ and ‘professional criminals’:
- Julia Hörath: "Asoziale" und "Berufsverbrecher" in den Konzentrationslagern 1933 bis 1938, Göttingen 2017.
- Dagmar Lieske: Unbequeme Opfer? "Berufsverbrecher" als Häftlinge im KZ Sachsenhausen, Berlin 2016.

https://eguide.its-arolsen.org/en/