_Breitling's index card from Flossenbürg concentration camp

Content warning: This text discusses murder.

This index card documents the transfer of dancer _Breitling from Flossenbürg concentration camp to the Groß-Rosen concentration camp on September 3rd 1942. At this point, _Breitling had already been working as a forced labourer for almost five years in various camps. On October 12th 1942, they were murdered at Groß-Rosen concentration camp. In the death register at the Groß-Rosen registry office, the cause of death was noted as “shot while trying to escape”. This was a frequently used phrasing, that does not necessarily provide any certainty about the actual cause of death.

In 1935, _Breitling was detained through Schutzhaft for five months in the Lichtenburg concentration camp for prostitution. After they were sentenced to a total of four years and nine months in prison for Section 175, extortion, receiving stolen property and pimping, at the end of January 1938, they were taken from investigative imprisonment in Hamburg to prison camp I Börgermoor Ems. Since then, they were forced to perform hardest physical labour. When cultivating moors for agriculture, machines were deliberately avoided. In the prison camp "Elbregulierung" (Elbe regulation) in Griebo, Breitling later worked either on the construction and maintenance of small dams in the Elbe or on the production of armament materials for war. On November 29th 1941, the last day of their prison sentence, the Munich police took _Breitling into "Vorbeugungshaft". In mid-January 1942, they were transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp.

Under Nazi rule, more than 13 million people were forced to work. Forced labour was essential to the war economy and a common means of forcing the bodies and minds of opponents of the Nazi regime to obey. It was also used to exploit other groups of people who were undesirable according to the Nazi ideology and in many cases, to exhaust them until they died.