When Carl Schrade repeatedly appeared in court in the 1920s for minor offenses, he posed no threat to anyone. Yet some people were already referring to repeat offenders as “professional criminals.” After 1933, these individuals were regarded as “inferior” human beings, were preventively imprisoned in concentration camps, and were forced to wear the green triangle there. From 1934 onward, Carl Schrade was imprisoned in various camps and earned a good reputation among fellow inmates at the Flossenbürg concentration camp as a prisoner medic. The color of his triangle, however, haunted him into postwar German society. It was only in France, where fellow prisoners helped him, that he found a new life.
