Compensation for Nazi Persecutees

The treatment of NS judicial convicts and their families after 1945 varied in the two German states and the Western European countries. Some were honoured as resistance fighters and quickly received financial support for the injustices they had suffered. Others fought for decades in vain for recognition and compensation.

Initially, in both the German Federal Republic (GFR) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR), compensation regulations differed by occupied zone and subsequently by each newly formed German federal state. In October 1949, the GDR established compensation payments which were binding for the entire Soviet Occupation Zone, granting recognised “victims of Nazi persecution”, amongst other things, special pension payments and medical benefits. In the GFR, from October 1953 onwards certain groups of persecutees were granted a lump sum compensation for imprisonment, pension payments or welfare benefits under the so-called BErG (later BEG), applicable in the entire GFR. However, numerous groups of victims were ‘forgotten’ in both the GFR and the GDR, including judicial convicts, such as those persecuted as criminals.

About 2,000 people from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway were imprisoned in Wolfenbüttel Prison and its external labour sites. 63 of them were executed by guillotine. The welfare or compensation benefits for returnees or for the relatives of the deceased varied greatly in each country. In all three countries, there were political disputes over who should receive compensation. This also involved negotiating the self-image of the respective post-war society and dealing with the period of occupation.

Learn more about compensation in each country.