An “asocial” Palatinate family

The family of Alfons L. Ims was hit by the full force of the National Socialists’ “asocial” policy.

Ims himself, born in 1949 as the youngest of ten children, grew up in Kaiserslautern on the Kalkofen, a slum. The family’s support was cut, among other things, because of the father’s earlier political activities. In accordance with the “racial hygiene” ideology and the “asocial” policy, the family members are considered “asocial people’s pests, morally inferior and congenitally feeble-minded.” What follows: Forced sterilization of the mother; institutionalization of almost all children. Some of them escape extermination in the euthanasia institutions only by chance. It was not until 1951 that the last of the children were released.

Ims used many archival finds to work through the fate of his family, from the Weimar period to the aftermath in today’s generation.

In the series Local Monday