In 1943, Rudolf Schleif was given a black triangle at the Buchenwald concentration camp. The SS considered him “asocial.” He had spent most of his life in homes or institutions. He came from a difficult background and had suffered from the effects of meningitis since childhood. At the age of eight, he was sent to a reformatory, and later to an institution for the mentally ill. There he attended school and began an apprenticeship, yet he was still deemed incurable. He was forcibly sterilized. When the doctors at the Waldheim Sanatorium handed over patients fit for work to the SS in 1943, his name was on the list. After a few weeks at the Dora satellite camp, the SS transported him to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to die.
