Four years ago, the State Archives of Baden-Württemberg created the podcast series “Sprechende Akten” (“Talking files: Nazi Victims and their Struggle for Compensation”, in German only). The now-released second season deals with the individual fates of persecuted persons who took the painful path to “Wiedergutmachung” of past crimes by the German authorities. The first new episode of the second season was published on Friday, February 27, 2026. The podcast is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Finance. It was produced by the Berlin-based company “We Are Producers. Stories in Audio” in cooperation with POOL ARTISTS.

Relatives of a resistance fighter who struggle to return to a normal life after family-punishment jail time; a Jewish woman who survives several concentration camps and suffers for the rest of her life; a drag queen whose lifestyle does not fit with National Socialist ideology; three persecuted siblings who have unfinished business with German authorities; and a young communist living underground who does not stop fighting Fascism.  

After the Second World War, the still young Federal Republic of Germany offered to compensate the victims of National Socialist persecution as part of “Wiedergutmachung”. However, not only the term “Wiedergutmachung” was contentious, it was often quite hard to obtain any compensation. The officials tasked with ruling on those claims decided in very diverging ways – at times with utmost coldness, sometimes with empathy, but always according to the letter of the law.

With this podcast, the State Archives of Baden-Württemberg shed light on this part of German history. The Archives selected compensation files from their holdings. They do not only showcase the stories behind the bureaucratic procedures, but they highlight the complexity of these cases. And they demonstrate how a country tried to grapple with the crimes which it had committed only recently.

You can listen to the podcast via https://www.archivportal-d.de/content/themenportale/wiedergutmachung/podcast?lang=en 
as well as on platforms provided by Apple, Google, Spotify, Deezer and Podimo.