“The Disavowed: Victims of National Socialism 1933 – 1945 – Today” will be on display from October 9, 2025, to January 4, 2026, at the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne, Appellhofplatz 23-25, 50667 Cologne. The exhibition is open Tuesdays to Fridays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays, Sundays, and public holidays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The exhibition commemorates people who were persecuted as “asocials” and “habitual criminals” under National Socialism. Their experiences are at the center. Between 1933 and 1945, authorities and police took up social prejudices. They control, harass, and rob tens of thousands of their freedom. Many are murdered.
The Federal Republic, the GDR, and Austria refuse to compensate those affected. Their experiences of injustice are denied.
In February 2020, the German Bundestag decided: “No one was rightly in a concentration camp, and those persecuted as ‘asocials’ and ‘habitual criminals’ were also victims of National Socialist tyranny.” As a result of this resolution, Parliament commissioned the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe Foundation and the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial to create an exhibition. It represents one of the most important commemorative policy projects of the decade in the Federal Republic.
Pictures from the opening presentation in Berlin, 2024
After the opening presentation in Berlin, the exhibition stopped at the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial from March 20 to September 14, 2025. Approximately 12,500 interested people were welcomed there. This means that the exhibition attracted around a third more visitors than in the previous year.
