Combating Nazi past & present

Man who exposed Nazi judiciary honored in Berlin

In November 1959, a penniless 29-year-old graduate set out 105 files in the backroom of the "Krokodil," a student bar in the south-western city of Karlsruhe. The collection, which Reinhard Strecker had spent several years gathering, blew up the complacency of a post-war West Germany that was carefully refusing to face its own recent history.

The exhibition Ungesühnte Nazijustiz ("Unpunished Nazi Judiciary") featured hundreds of laboriously and expensively photocopied court files that showed the verdicts of Nazi-era judges still serving in Germany. Strecker suffered death threats and slander (not least by the West German government) for his trouble, but he attracted huge national and international press interest.