At no other time in Germany’s history were people so intensively and systematically persecuted, excluded, tortured, deported and murdered as during the National Socialist regime from 1933 to 1945. Individu­als who were not in the public eye – which is the case with the vast majority of the victims of fascist terror – have left no or few traces that enable their biographies to be reconstructed.

Many documents, letters and photographs have been lost or destroyed. Sometimes, with the help of surviving relatives, it is possible to add colour to the victims’ life stories by using personal narratives to flesh out the otherwise rudimentary information about them to be found in files or trans­portation lists. Therefore, the bio­graphies in this collection are just as varied in scope as were the lives lived by the people who are their subjects. The bio­graphies also show how meticulously the National Socialists covered their tracks and how syste­matically they went about extinguishing human lives.

If you have additional or differing infor­mation about the individuals presented here, we would be delighted to hear from you so that we can change or supplement the bio­graphies accordingly.