- www.die-verleugneten.de
- Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial, Gedächtnisallee 5, 92696 Flossenbürg
The traveling exhibition »The Disavowed. Victims of National Socialism 1933 – 1945 – today«
The exhibition commemorates people who were persecuted under National Socialism as »asocials« and »career criminals«. Their experiences take centre stage. Between 1933 and 1945, the authorities and police capitalised on social prejudices. They control, harass and deprive tens of thousands of their freedom. Many are murdered.
The Federal Republic of Germany, the GDR and Austria refused to compensate those affected. Their experiences of injustice are denied. It was not until 2020 that the German parliament decided to recognise them as victims of National Socialism.
The exhibition was officially opened in Berlin on 10 October 2024.
From 20 March to 14 September 2025, interested parties can visit the exhibition at the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial, Gedächtnisallee 5, 92696 Flossenbürg, every day from 9 am to 5 pm.
After the presentation in Berlin and at the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial, the travelling exhibition will be shown at other locations in Germany and Austria.
The website at »www.die-verleugneten.de/en«
The website “The Disavowed”
has been online since 27 June 2022. It is part of the exhibition project on those persecuted under National Socialism as »asocials« and »carrer criminals« and accompanied the creation of the travelling exhibition.
At the launch of the website, seven people who were persecuted as »asocials« or »carrer criminals« were initially presented. The biographies raise many questions: Why were people persecuted by the National Socialists as »community aliens« (»Gemeinschaftsfremde«)? How did they react to these accusations and how did their relatives deal with them? Who was involved in their persecution? And why did the state and society refuse to recognise them for so long?
THE BIOGRAPHY OF WILHELM ZORICHTAS
Wilhelm Zorichtas
Wilhelm Zorichta’s parents were deaf and lived in a poorhouse. He and his siblings grew up partly in institutional care. Wilhelm Zorichta was discharged from a reformatory at the age of 19. At first he had no steady employment but worked occasionally at markets, and he had no fixed address. This was enough for the authorities to consider him an »asocial minor« and send him to a youth concentration camp. Despite reports by the camp leadership describing Wilhelm Zorichta as a »quiet, disciplined boy« and a »good-natured lad«, he was not granted release.
His father’s petitions for his release were also unsuccessful. At the age of just 24, he was sent to Dachau concentration camp. At this point, he had spent almost his entire life in camps and institutions. However, when he was transferred to a subcamp of Flossenbürg concentration camp in autumn 1944, his trail was lost. It is not known whether Wilhelm Zorichta survived his imprisonment. As with many of those persecuted as alleged »asocials« or »career criminals«, his story can almost only be reconstructed through files that the perpetrators created about him.
Background
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Nearly 80 years after the end of the Second World War, there are still gaps in the culture of remembrance in Germany and Austria. The suffering of tens of thousands of women, men and young people who were labelled as »community aliens« (»Gemeinschaftsfremde«), »asocials« or »carreer criminals« is only gradually coming to public attention. They were locked up in concentration camps, held in homes and psychiatric institutions, many of them forcibly sterilised.
In the post-war period, survivors were excluded from compensation payments in the Federal Republic of Germany, the GDR and Austria. Those who had been persecuted by the National Socialists as »career criminals« or »asocials« continued to be viewed with suspicion, stigmatised and excluded in post-war society. For those affected themselves, but also in subsequent generations, the shame about the reasons for their persecution led to decades of silence.
It was not until the 1980s that a few researchers began to analyse the persecution. However, it was to take several more decades before the topic received the attention it deserved: An initiative group led by Professor Dr Frank Nonnenmacher, himself the nephew of a prisoner stigmatised as a »carrer criminal«, brought it into the political arena. It was not until 2020 that the German parliament decided to recognise those persecuted as »asocials« and »career criminals« as victims of National Socialism. The exhibition project is part of this decision.
Project participants
The traveling exhibition and the accompanying website are being developed jointly by the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial on behalf of the German Bundestag. The concept and design of the website were developed in collaboration with the agency werk21 Kommunikation . The programming was done by the agency Acb. allcodesarebeautiful and //* Alle Wetter. The exhibition was designed by GABU Heindl Architecture with Zoff GbR and SIRENE Studio.
The exhibition project is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
