I have a few questions I want to ask

[Celena]

I've read that most social misfits were interned in camps as 'Asoziale' or something like that. I'm wondering if there were actual communities of transients, vagrants, "bums", living in major cities such as Vienna and Berlin, during the war, (i.e., like there are now in the US) or whether the regime "solved" that problem completely. Did 'flophouses' like the one Hitler once lived in still exist? I need to know this as background for a book I'm writing as I'm hoping one of my characters can "hide out" as a homeless vagrant in Vienna. It would not work if he were the only one!! Greg, do you know the answer to this? Thanks in advance to this wonderful, helpful community!!

[Helmut0815]

I've read that most social misfits were interned in camps as 'Asoziale' or something like that. I'm wondering if there were actual communities of transients, vagrants, "bums", living in major cities such as Vienna and Berlin, during the war, (i.e., like there are now in the US) or whether the regime "solved" that problem completely.

The latter one.

The NS regime had a strict zero tolerance policy against so called anti-social individuals. As "Asoziale" were considered: the homeless, beggars, vagabonds, "work-shy people", gypsies, so called "social benefit suckers", alcoholics, persons with a major criminal record, prostitutes and pimps.
Several actions were took place against those social misfits, starting with the "Bettlerwochen" (beggars weeks) in September 1933 where some tenth of thousands beggars and vagrants in German cities were rounded up by the police and send to labour and concentration camps for some weeks. On December 14th 1937 the ministry of interior affairs released the Fundamental Decree of Crime Prevention by law enforcement (Grundlegender Erlaß über die vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung durch die Polizei). It allowed the arrest and imprisonment of anti-social suspects without any judicial order. According to the decree the regime started a cleanup in 1938, the 'Aktion „Arbeitsscheu Reich“'. In two waves more than 10,000 people were arrested and send to the camps, starting in April 38 with approx. 2,000 'work-shy', persons who twice refused a job offer or left their place of work without excuse. Another 9,000 people (beggars, vagabonds, boozers, pimps, gypsies and jews with a criminal record) where send to the camps in June 1938 (Juni Aktion). Before WWII started, social misfits were the biggest group among the KZ inmates, wearing a black triangle on their pyjama.

Thus, it is highly doubtful that communities of vagrants and bums existed in Nazi Germany, sure not after 1938.

best regards


Helmut