Anna Eckstein’s case is an example of the way the authorities worked from day to day:
Her application for compensation made in 1951 to what was then the State District Office for Compensation in Karlsruhe resulted in her being summoned by the police criminal investigation department. There she was received by a former SS man from the Reich Main Security Office, Leo Karsten.
The subsequent letter of November 1951 from the State Office for the Criminal Records Service and Police Statistics, now the Baden-Württemberg State Office of Criminal Investigations (LKA), to the Compensation Authority included the following:
"The applicant’s compensation application was verified in accordance with a local request. On 13.9.51 Eckstein was interviewed again by the State Police — district criminal police authority — in Karlsruhe to establish her personal details and on the matter in hand, and her identification data was checked. Her fingerprints were duplicated and despatched to all German police records departments. The following identification data and/or matching fingerprints are on record for the above-mentioned applicant:
on 8.10.1925 in Mannheim;
on 15.3.1926 in Mannheim, grounds: "Gypsy";
on 6.4.1926 in Mannheim to present an ID card;
on 14.4.1926 in Heidelberg for breaching the regulations on gypsies;
on [!] 6.9.1927 in Sinsheim;
on 11.6.1928 in Mannheim to renew the personal data form;
on 18.3.1930 in Mannheim;
on 23.5.1930 in Mannheim to present a personal data form;
on 29.8.1931 in Waldkirch for offences against the Industrial Code;
on 14.6.1932 in Rastatt for the establishment of her identity;
on 24.5.1934 in Wolfach, for reasons unknown;
on 16.12.1948 in Offenburg for trickery;
on 14.9.1951 in Karlsruhe for the establishment of her identity.
According to a file note, Eckstein (No. 2181) was evacuated from Stuttgart to the then General Government on 23.5.1940 with her husband (No. 2180).
The same fingerprints are also held at the Central Office in Munich under the same personal data. It was furthermore disclosed that under racial biological report no. 1459, E. was declared a gypsy half-breed by the Reich Ministry of Health in Berlin on 27.6.41.
The same fingerprints are also held in the dactyloscopic collection of the LKA Freiburg and the Hessian LKA Wiesbaden under the same personal data.
Eckstein and her husband were evacuated to Poland on security grounds in 1940. Under the latest judicial decision of the Baden-Wuerttemberg Ministry of Justice (Circular E 14) of 11.7.51, she cannot extrapolate an entitlement to compensation."
