Biographies of Perpetrators

The term 'biography' is composed of the ancient Greek words bios (life) and graphien (carve, write, paint).¹ In a biography, a life is thus described or painted.

Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945

Biographies often shed light on the character and eventful periods of life of personalities who have shaped society or exerted an influence on it. The people whose biographies are described on the following exhibition pages have certainly left their mark on society; but in a distinctly negative sense. It is not about world-famous and dazzling personalities, but about the perpetrators of the Maly Trascjanec extermination site, who remained nameless for a long time. They contributed their own part to the extermination policy during the German occupation and were sentenced in war crimes trials. Probably the best-known work dealing with the biographies of perpetrators under National Socialism is Ernst Klee's "Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich". It provides a good overview of the National Socialist "elite" and at the same time reveals the complexity of the subject area.

Based on the life paths of individual perpetrators, information can be gathered, but also the following fundamental questions can be raised:

• Are there any overlaps in their professional careers?
• Did their lives overlap geographically during the war?
• What was the social status of the perpetrators?
• Were the perpetrators stationed in the same place by chance, or can biographical similarities be identified that make their stay in the same place seem causal?

The selected biographies presented in this project are intended to give an insight into the lives of the perpetrators and outline their professional careers. They symbolize numerous biographies of perpetrators of the Third Reich; at the same time, they make no claim to universal validity. They remain person-specific life stories that stand for themselves and have to be interpreted. All of the perpetrator biographies presented here have one thing in common: they took place in Maly Trascjanec.