Wilhelm Billotin (1890-1943), 1939. Photo: Identification service of the Cologne criminal police.
©Landesarchiv NRW
Wilhelm Billotin was among the first “preventive custody inmates” committed to Buchenwald from late 1942 onward in keeping with an agreement between the SS and the judiciary. After four years as a soldier in World War I, the unskilled worker had not been able to gain a foothold: he was unemployed, his marriage failed, he committed robberies. During the war, the judiciary took severe action against men of his kind. On account of his prior convictions he was labelled “national vermin” and a “habitual criminal”. In 1941 he was sentenced to long-term detention in a penal institution. His handover to the SS amounted to a death sentence. Like many preventive custody inmates, he survived in Buchenwald for only a short time.
