Pawel Sawicki, speaking for the Auschwitz Memorial, told the AP that the watercolors Gottliebova Babbitt was forced to paint for Mengele “must remain in the Memorial” as documentation of crimes. He said they must stay out of the category of Nazi-looted art, because she painted them against her will as a prisoner and therefore had no ownership of them.
Well, that’s entirely backwards on the face of it.
I mean, “looted” means something you owned was taken from you. Sawicki says she painted them against her will as a prisoner and so could never claim ownership, which means nothing was taken, which means they don’t count as looted. That transfers slave work to the enslaver: SS-commissioned records made with SS materials, belonging to the camp administration from the moment they existed.
With that in mind, I’m guessing he insists on the category because the daughters’ lawsuit relies on a 2024 California law (Code of Civil Procedure § 338.2) covering art taken or lost as a result of political persecution. If the paintings were never hers, nothing was taken from her, and the Memorial can argue the law stops applying. The Memorial exhibits her coercion as evidence of Nazi crimes, and then cites that same Nazi coercion as why they too should deny her title? The same coercion serves as the exhibit and then the defense against restoring rights to the enslaved. What are we doing here?
Let’s run through the problems with the memorial logic:
The Auschwitz Memorial just voided the victims’ rights. They invert how duress normally works. Coercion usually voids the taker’s claim. Here it’s used to void those who experienced loss. It’s effectively work-for-hire doctrine with Mengele as the employer, where the product of slave labor belongs to the enslaver (or the people now running the memorial to the victims of the enslaver). Poland took over the site in 1947. The UNESCO record gives the sequence: the museum bought her paintings in 1963 and 1977, and identified her as the living painter in 1969. It acquired the seventh in 1977 anyway. By her family’s account she had already come to Poland in 1973 to take them home and was turned away, as if she didn’t have rights to her own work. The museum has kept all seven through every request since. By its own published account it claims purchase was legal as set under Polish law, with a copyright conceded to her. Sawicki’s line is old. The daughters’ complaint alleges museum officials called her Mengele’s worker and told her that legally only Mengele might have a claim to the paintings. Sawicki says it now about a Jewish survivor while the Memorial, by its own account, already concedes the copyright is hers.
From the premise of step one, the Memorial’s title runs through the Nazi perpetrators. If the victim never owned her own work, the SS did, and everything downstream inherits from the SS. The documentation is brief. It is the museum’s own account. Three days after liberation a boy from Oświęcim came to the camp to take in a Jewish orphan from the horrific Hungarian transports. A freed prisoner handed him a roll of seven watercolors signed “Dinah 1944”. The girl grew up in that family and sold six of them to the museum in 1963. The museum acquired the seventh in 1977 and identified Babbitt as the painter in 1969. It has known for 57 years whose work it holds under dubious logic.
So far it’s a failure of morality, but there’s also just a simple logical disaster. The memorial contradicts itself. The Memorial says it fully respects the rights of the people who created these documents right after arguing she had none. The negation of full rights comes from their own loud denial of a victim’s rights.
The US House of Representatives rejected the premise in 1999 when H.Con.Res. 162 urged the museum to transfer the seven originals to her. A Senate resolution introduced in 2001 called her unquestionably the rightful owner. In 2002 Congress made it law. Section 705 of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act (Pub. L. 107-228) recognized her moral right to the paintings and urged the President to make all efforts necessary to retrieve them. The museum has held the same position through all of it. Why? Poland has a record here. In August 2021 it enacted a thirty-year limit on challenges to administrative confiscations (Dz.U. 2021 poz. 1491). The law covers every claimant, and its effect was to close the cases of Holocaust victims’ heirs seeking property nationalized after the war. The US Secretary of State said he deeply regretted it. Israel’s foreign minister called it antisemitic. The Memorial is a Polish state institution and, after Babbitt died still asking, its answer to her daughters lands in the same place: the victim gets nothing.
The museum could make a much more logical argument instead, which proves the ownership claim is unnecessary.
A Polish state institution chose to answer a Jewish survivor’s daughters by saying that enslavement to Nazis cost her the title to her own work, which turns the crime against her into the ground for keeping her work. They could have said that the portraits are among the few surviving records of Mengele’s experiments on Roma and Sinti victims, the subjects were murdered, and there’s simply a case that evidence of genocide is needed at the site and that the Roma have a stake too.
That’s an argument about custody and public interest, which doesn’t need the argument that a victim of Nazis never owned her own work. Think about the people who today run a site drawing attention to a victim of Nazism. The Polish administration tells visitors the Nazis forced her to paint. It tells the press that some other force, not them, is why she never owned the paintings, while it keeps them from her family.
How convenient to point a finger at the Germans as the bad guys while Poland denies victims’ rights. Germany ran the camp, with SS men recruited from across Europe, ethnic Germans from Poland among them. The town around it knew. Poland took over the site in 1947 and has refused to give the enslaved artist her own paintings through every request since. Poland wrote this into law twice. The decree of 8 March 1946 (Dz.U. 1946 nr 13 poz. 87) gave the state title to property its owners failed to reclaim in time. Three million of Poland’s Jewish citizens were murdered, their homes and businesses classified by Poland under the word abandoned instead of looted and stolen. The 2021 law blocked challenges. The Memorial’s refusal is just that.
It’s not very hard to figure out. By its own account the museum already concedes the estate controls reproduction, so a licensed copy is a deal it has the legal footing to make today. Make a copy of the art, license it from the victim’s estate, and then present the replica at the site. Give the original back to the victim’s estate, where it belongs.
Apply the Memorial’s rule to the very ground it stands on today.
The SS seized the barracks from the Polish army and the fields from expelled Polish villagers. If what the SS took by force became SS property, the site itself belongs to Germany today. Poland rejects that rule to reclaim rights over its land. It should reject that rule for her paintings, because it’s the same rule.
ICE’s plan for Socorro, Texas puts 8,500 beds into 826,780 square feet of warehouse. Ninety-seven square feet per person, gross, in a standard design whose documents list holding areas, gyms, cafeterias and a gun range.
That’s big. Very big.
Now apply that same density to the floor space of the 474 AI data centers on Erin Brockovich’s community map and the buildings hold 8.7 million people. That is 63 percent of everyone living in the United States without status. Count only the floor space running today and the buildings hold 561,000 people, eight and a half times the number ICE had in custody at the last count.
Let’s be honest about history, as I didn’t go to LSE for nothing. If we know anything at all about President Jackson, Trump’s favorite, we should strip the word datacenter from the map and read the buildings as removal camps. Jackson’s genocidal Removal Act of 1830 gave the policy its word, and the stockades of 1838 cruelly held the Cherokee through a summer of disease before the trail of tears killed about a quarter of them, with as many again dead after arrival, by Russell Thornton’s reckoning.
Donald Trump’s favorite president: Andrew “white republic” Jackson. Historian Matthew Clavin says as terrible as Andrew Jackson was he likely would have despised Trump.
Seen as labor camps the major complaints the towns have been filing suddenly vanish, almost too easily.
The complaint
The camp function
Too much water
Deprivation
Too much energy
Deprivation
Too few jobs
Slave labor
The Map
Map 1. Data center floor space counted as camp capacity. Shading is the unauthorized population by state (MPI, 2023). Teal markers are the 474 facilities on the Brockovich map, sized by estimated floor space. Red and amber markers are ICE’s warehouse purchases.
Two conversions make the map useful and both come from published figures. Stargate Abilene is about 4 million square feet for 1.2 gigawatts and xAI’s Colossus is 785,000 square feet for its first 150 megawatts, so one gigawatt is roughly 4 million square feet of shell at 250 watts per square foot. ICE’s own Socorro plan supplies the second figure, 97 square feet per bed. The Brockovich dataset, built on Compute Atlas and Epoch AI, claims 211 gigawatts across the country, 13.6 of them running. That is 846 million square feet claimed and 54 million built.
State
Beds at ICE density
Unauthorized residents
Coverage
Texas
2,250,000
1,966,000
114%
Utah
957,000
138,000
693%
Pennsylvania
528,000
250,000
211%
New Mexico
383,000
63,000
608%
Ohio
356,000
90,000
396%
Indiana
339,000
137,000
248%
Georgia
329,000
479,000
69%
Arizona
304,000
307,000
99%
Illinois
267,000
588,000
45%
Florida
62,000
1,223,000
5%
California
56,000
2,910,000
2%
New York
47,000
836,000
6%
United States
8,719,000
13,737,000
63%
Beds divide estimated floor space by 97 square feet. Population is the Migration Policy Institute’s 2023 estimate. At 500 watts per square foot, the densest halls now being built, the claimed floor space still holds 4.4 million and the running floor space 281,000.
Texas alone claims 218 million square feet, enough to hold every unauthorized resident of the state with room to spare. Utah’s campuses would hold seven times Utah’s unauthorized population, New Mexico’s six times, Ohio’s four. California, New York, Florida and Illinois hold 40 percent of the people and 5 percent of the floor space.
The Geometry
The German camps sat far from the people they were built for. Berlin alone held a third of the country’s Jews, and the cities held the Communists and Social Democrats. The camps went to a disused munitions works outside Munich, a moor at Esterwegen, the Ettersberg above Weimar, a quarry at Mauthausen. The Reichsbahn moved the population to the site. A gap between where people live and where capacity is built is the signature of a camp system, as seen on the map.
There are two logical steps in sequence for how sites were set, which also are on the map.
The First Logic: Custody Where Labor Is Free
Prussia placed camps in the Emsland moors in 1933, and by 1934 the Justice Ministry ran them as prison labor camps cutting peat. In 1938 the SS founded its own quarrying company, Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke, and from then placed Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Gross-Rosen and Natzweiler at granite quarries, Neuengamme at a brickworks. The prisoner was free labor attached to a resource, and the camp went to the resource.
The American jurisdiction for that arrangement is the Thirteenth Amendment exception, used in full in seven states that pay prisoners nothing for regular work: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas (ACLU and the University of Chicago Law School Global Human Rights Clinic, Captive Labor, 2022). Texas, Mississippi and Georgia rank in the top twenty states for data center floor space per resident. Texas and Georgia hold 20,000 of the 34,000 warehouse beds ICE has bought.
Map 2. ICE’s Detention Reengineering Initiative against the unauthorized population by state. Sites are sized by planned beds and colored by status.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2023 imprisonment rates against floor space per resident give a rank correlation of 0.46 across the fifty states, 0.50 with Utah removed. By quartile of floor space per resident, mean imprisonment rates run 356, 381, 318 and 226. The ten states that imprison the fewest people, Massachusetts through Washington, all sit in the bottom twenty for floor space, seven of them in the bottom twelve, four with none at all. States that decline to imprison their own residents decline to host this floor space.
State
ICE beds bought
Imprisonment rate 2023
Floor space, sq ft per resident
Texas
10,000
477
7.1
Georgia
10,000
449
2.9
Pennsylvania
9,000
300
3.9
Arizona
1,500
448
3.9
Maryland
1,500
261
1.5
New Jersey
1,500
125
0.2
Michigan
500
328
1.1
Imprisonment rate is sentenced prisoners per 100,000 residents (BJS, Prisoners in 2023, Table 7). Floor space per resident uses Census 2023 population estimates.
The Second Logic: Industry Where Water and Fuel Are Cheap
IG Farben chose Auschwitz in 1941 for Silesian coal, the water of the Vistula and the Sola, limestone and the rail junction. Its planners reported the camp’s labor as a further advantage, and the SS built Monowitz beside the plant. The campuses that break the prison correlation follow this logic. Creekstone’s 10 gigawatt site at Delta, Utah, the town beside the Intermountain Power Plant, runs on its own gas and solar on state trust land. Homer City in Pennsylvania is a dead coal plant converted to gas. Project Jupiter at Santa Teresa, New Mexico runs on an on-site gas microgrid, the 7 gigawatt Lea County proposal sits on the Permian Basin, and Alaska’s North Slope proposal would run on its own pipeline. Utah imprisons 186 people per 100,000 and has the largest campus in the country under construction, while Salt Lake City stopped the ICE warehouse with a water ordinance. Monowitz siting puts water and fuel first. Custody arrives afterward.
The two logics converged in 1942, when armaments plants pulled roughly a thousand subcamps to the factories and the prisoner followed the machine. This history lens yields a prediction. The next purchases in America will land at power and water in unpaid-labor states, while the transit sites stay at the rail heads and airports. Texas already fits all three.
Water, Energy, Jobs
The city of Social Circle, Georgia locked the water meter on the million-square-foot warehouse ICE bought for a 10,000-person mega-center. From the city’s statement:
Our permit to draw water out of the river is 1 million gallons a day. Our sewer plant can process 660,000 gallons per day and is at capacity. Their BLUF analysis indicates a daily water and sewer need that exceeds these amounts.
ICE’s Detention Reengineering Initiative answers with engineering reviews to make every site run independent of local water, power and wastewater. The town holds the valve today. The plan moves the valve inside the fence, where the operator decides who gets water. That is the kwanliso configuration, a self-contained site where provisioning is at the guard’s discretion and deprivation is the baseline condition of the site.
The Atlantic ran Elias Wachtel’s “The Data-Center Panic Is Overblown” in June and Andy Masley’s “The Data-Center Debate Is Divorced From the Facts” on 19 September, the second written, by the magazine’s own disclosure, on a grant from Coefficient Giving, the renamed Open Philanthropy, whose principal funder Dustin Moskovitz is an investor in Anthropic. Both essays argue at the national average, where water per query is trivial and grid strain is manageable. Social Circle measures its own river. The 1941 method chose sites by local water and local coal, and a town that reads its permit against the project’s demand is reading the project the way its builders do.
The jobs claim resolves the same way. ICE told Salt Lake City a warehouse for up to 10,000 people would bring almost 10,000 jobs. Detainees already do the cooking and cleaning in ICE facilities under the $1 a day “voluntary work program,” and GEO Group lost about $23 million in Tacoma in 2021 over it. In the German system the SS rented prisoners to firms at three to six Reichsmarks a day, so the prisoner was revenue. Here ICE pays GEO and CoreCivic per bed-day, so the bed is the product and the body is a cost, which is why this system builds capacity first and finds people second.
The density is already documented. The DHS Inspector General’s report of 14 September 2026 on the Everglades camp found 79 detainees confined in metal enclosures of about 18 square feet, for periods up to two hours, and housing that gave detainees less than half the living space federal standards require.
Small cages that were used in the ICE detention facility in Ochopee, Florida. Photograph: OIG/DHS
The posted policy on the enclosures:
safe and secure place in general population for detainees to reflect on their behavior choices, manage their emotions, reduce stress, and practice self-directed behavior
Square feet per body
42U server rack, plus aisle
8, about 25
Birkenau horse-stable barrack, 400 assigned
10
Everglades “calming area” enclosure
18
ACA standard for multiple-occupancy housing, unencumbered
25
ICE Socorro plan, gross
97
Processing Becomes Terminus
Trump set the number himself. In his interviews with Time on 12 and 27 April 2024 he put the population at “probably 15 million and maybe as many as 20 million by the time Biden’s out,” and answered the question of camps with “I would not rule out anything,” adding that there would be little need for them because the people would be taken out of the country quickly. In December 2024 he told the same magazine, “I want them out, and the countries have got to take them back.” Stephen Miller had already described to the New York Times, in November 2023, vast holding facilities to be built by the military on open land near the Texas border. Twenty million is ten times the entire American prison and jail population and beyond any camp system ever operated; the Gulag peaked near 2.5 million and the German system near 700,000 held at once in early 1945. The plan’s premise is an open exit, and the countries taking people back is the condition that fails first.
Population equals flow times dwell. ICE holds about 65,765 people, has removed 356,389 in this fiscal year through mid-July, and reports an average stay of 52 days, up from 42 in 2022. Sixty-five thousand divided by 52 days times 365 is 462,000 a year, which is the removal pace. The pipe is balanced. Add the plan’s 92,600 beds and the system holds 158,000, which at 52 to 60 days is a pipe for one million a year, the administration’s stated target. The size is transit-sized. The design fails at the exit, because intake is the only variable the operator controls. Removal depends on flights, receiving countries and 570 immigration judges facing a 3.3 million case backlog with waits near 900 days. The release valve is gone: since July 2025 ICE reads section 1225 to deny bond to anyone who entered without inspection, and the Board of Immigration Appeals agreed in Matter of Yajure Hurtado. Any reservoir whose outlet is smaller than its inlet fills. Terminus arrives by arithmetic.
That is the German sequence, read correctly. Heydrich’s Schnellbrief of 21 September 1939 (Nuremberg document PS-3363) separated the immediate concentration of Jews in cities from the goal it served:
Es ist zu unterscheiden zwischen 1. dem Endziel (welches längere Fristen beansprucht) und 2. den Abschnitten der Erfüllung des Endziels (welche kurzfristig durchgeführt werden).
Hitler had set that final goal in his letter to Adolf Gemlich of 16 September 1919, fourteen years before he took power: “die Entfernung der Juden überhaupt.” The exit was removal. Emigration first, then the Nisko reservation in October 1939, then Madagascar in 1940. Each closed. Emigration was banned outright on 23 October 1941, and the holding pens turned terminal by attrition, about 43,000 dead in the Warsaw ghetto in 1941, then by decision. The Wannsee protocol of 20 January 1942 (NG-2586) records the substitution in one sentence:
An Stelle der Auswanderung ist nunmehr als weitere Lösungsmöglichkeit nach entsprechender vorheriger Genehmigung durch den Führer die Evakuierung der Juden nach dem Osten getreten.
Emigration out, evacuation to the East in. The verb stayed the same and the destination changed. Slavery was a 1942 addition when the war economy needed hands, and Vernichtung durch Arbeit came with the Thierack-Himmler agreement of 18 September 1942 (PS-654). “Removal” is the same destination-agnostic verb.
The American exit is already being redefined the same way. When a country declines to take someone back, the answer since the Supreme Court’s June 2025 order in DHS v. D.V.D. is a third country, and CECOT was the proof of concept: 238 Venezuelans flown to a foreign prison on 15 March 2025 and held there uncharged for four months. That is a terminus, built offshore. Zadvydas v. Davis caps post-order detention at a presumptive six months; third-country removal is the workaround. Deaths in ICE custody reached 25 in fiscal 2025, the most since 2004, and fiscal 2026 passed that total by the end of March with 26.
Germany 1933 to 1945
United States 2025 to 2026
Building
Munitions works, brewery, mill, moor barracks; from 1942 a standard horse-stable type
Logistics warehouses, 250,000 to 1,000,000 sq ft; “standardized design”
Site
Away from the cities; at quarries, brickworks, rail junctions; Auschwitz for coal and water
Away from California, New York, Florida; Socorro, Social Circle, Tremont; campuses at power plants and gas fields
Water and power
SS-controlled; Birkenau without washing barracks until 1943; DPRK huts without electricity
Sites engineered independent of local water, power, wastewater; towns locking meters
Dwell
Transit camps: Westerbork about 10,000 held, 100,000 through; Drancy 5,000 to 7,000, 65,000 through
Processing sites 3 to 7 days; mega-centers 60 days; 52-day average today
Labor
Prisoner rented to industry at 3 to 6 RM a day; the body was revenue
Bed-day paid to operator; $1 a day work program; the body is a cost
The word
Aussiedlung, Evakuierung, Endziel
Removal, remigration, self-deportation
Exit
Emigration until 1941; then “the East”; DPRK kwanliso: none
Removal flights; third countries since June 2025; CECOT
Jurisdiction
Schutzhaft, custody outside the courts
Civil detention; bond denied under section 1225 since July 2025; federal ownership to bypass state law
Who Is Building It
The people choosing this were raised inside what it produces. Elon Musk’s grandfather Joshua Haldeman led Technocracy Incorporated in Canada, was arrested in 1940 when Canada banned the movement as a national security risk, chaired Social Credit in 1946 while its members read the Protocols into Hansard, and told Die Transvaler in 1951 that Canada’s attitude had encouraged him to settle in apartheid South Africa. Peter Thiel’s father left Germany as the 1968 anti-Nazi movement rose and placed his son in the German school at Swakopmund, where the New York Times found “Heil Hitler” in use as the everyday greeting in 1976, while he managed construction of the Rössing uranium mine for the apartheid nuclear supply chain. Stephen Miller writes “remigration,” the Identitarian term, and the State Department proposed an Office of Remigration. Musk told an AfD rally in Halle to stop dwelling on past guilt.
People who reach for the vocabulary of 1941 and site their buildings by its method have read the manual, or were raised by people who relayed it to them.
The precedent that fits best is Monowitz, where private capital chose a site for coal and water and bought custody from the Nazi SS as an input. The data center is a private plant and ICE is the supplier. That is the Nazi arrangement that ended worst of all, and it is the one being built.
Die AfD hat dem Verwaltungsgericht Köln im Februar eine konkrete Zahl genannt, um zu erklären, was ihre Redner mit “millionenfacher Remigration” meinen: zwei Millionen. Gemeint seien alle derzeit Ausreisepflichtigen plus alle, die aus Syrien, Afghanistan und der Ukraine gekommen sind. Das Gericht hat die Erklärung der Partei in Rn. 57 festgehalten und in Rn. 268 geantwortet, dass ausreisepflichtige Personen in dieser Zahl in der Bundesrepublik nicht vorhanden sind. Die Partei hatte nach Herkunftsland gezählt. Man beachte die Lücke.
Sieben Monate später sagte Friedrich Merz im Bundestag, was jeder über die Bedeutung des Wortes weiß.
Meine Damen und Herren, das Wort “Remigration” ist nichts anderes als ein Synonym für ethnische Säuberung nach Herkunft und Hautfarbe.
Plenarprotokoll 21/92, S. 11376. Die AfD brüllte ihren Widerspruch von den Bänken. Wie kann man es wagen, sie für die Wörter zur Verantwortung zu ziehen, die sie benutzt? Wie kann es jemand wagen, das Wortspiel zu beenden und ihre Propaganda offenzulegen?
Bernd Baumann: “Das ist rechtsstaatlich!” und “Das fordert kein Mensch!” Beatrix von Storch, als Merz sagte, mehr Abschiebungen seien Koalitionspolitik, stellte die Sache auf den Kopf: “das ist Remigration!” Am nächsten Tag erstattete die Fraktion Strafanzeige wegen “verleumderischer Beleidigung”. Ihre Pressemitteilung beschreibt den Vorwurf als einen der “Vertreibungen und Morde”. Die Partei der Hassrede lieferte beide Wörter selbst und nannte es ein Verbrechen, ihr schlicht und offen zurückzusagen, was sie mit Ablenkung verschleiert.
Über Alice statt Alles? Nein, AfD, das Nazi-Wortspiel ist nicht lustig.
Das Wort Remigration hat eine einfache Geschichte.
Quelle
Was “Remigration” dort bedeutet
Latein, remigrare
Zurückgehen, nach Hause zurückkehren. Eine freiwillige Handlung.
Eine monatliche Zuwendung für Einwanderer, die sich für die Rückkehr in ihr Herkunftsland entscheiden. Die Gesetzesbegründung der Regierung nennt die Entscheidung “een geheel vrijwillig en persoonlijk besluit”.
Deutsche Exilforschung. Marita Krauss, Heimkehr in ein fremdes Land. Geschichte der Remigration nach 1945, C.H. Beck 2001
Die Rückkehr von Menschen, die vor politischer, rassistischer oder religiöser Verfolgung durch die Nationalsozialisten geflohen waren und im Exil überlebt haben.
Unwort des Jahres 2023, Jurybegründung, 15. Januar 2024
Ein Begriff aus der Migrations- und Exilforschung, der vor allem freiwillige Formen der Rückkehr umfasst, “darunter die Rückkehr jüdischer Menschen aus dem Exil nach 1945”, von rechts vereinnahmt als Euphemismus für die Ausweisung von Menschen mit Migrationsgeschichte, Staatsbürger eingeschlossen. Gastjuror Ruprecht Polenz, früherer CDU-Generalsekretär: Das Wort verdeckt “die Deportation aller Menschen mit vermeintlich falscher Hautfarbe oder Herkunft, selbst dann, wenn sie deutsche Staatsbürger sind.”
Carl Schmitt, Vorwort von 1926 zu Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus
Demokratie braucht Homogenität und deshalb “Ausscheidung oder Vertreibung des Heterogenen”. Sellner nennt ihn als Quelle seines Konzepts.
Drei Gruppen: Asylbewerber, Ausländer mit Aufenthaltsrecht und 5 bis 6 Millionen deutsche Staatsangehörige, die als nicht assimiliert gelten. Bewegt durch “Assimilationsdruck”, eine “strenge De-Islamisierungspolitik”, “strukturellen Druck” nach dem Vorbild dänischer Ghetto-Gesetze und Passentzug, wobei Staatenlosigkeit “durchaus denkbar” sei. Die Feststellung des Gerichts: “Staatsbürger zweiter Klasse”, “menschenwürdewidrig”.
“Rückführung ausreisepflichtiger Ausländer in ihre Heimat.” Punkt 3 desselben Papiers nennt “aus Syrien und Afghanistan stammende” Personen als “großes Remigrations-Potential”. Punkt 6 macht den Aufenthalt vom eigenen Lebensunterhalt abhängig.
Die AfD übernahm das Wort, nachdem Gerichte seine Bedeutung festgehalten hatten, vielleicht gerade weil seine Wirkung so klar war.
Datum
Äußerung oder Entscheidung
August 2018
Björn Höcke, Nie zweimal in denselben Fluss: ein “groß angelegtes Remigrationsprojekt”, durchzuführen mit “wohltemperierter Grausamkeit”. Das OVG Münster zitiert später sein “gesamteuropäisches Remigrationsprojekt” und “Remigrationsprogramme, die natürlich De-Islamisierungsprogramme inkludieren” (S. 66).
September 2019
Christina Baum, heute MdB: “eine sofortige Rückführung – Remigration, damit Deutschland weiter leben kann”, eingeleitet mit “Eine Arabisierung/Islamisierung findet n i c h t statt.” OVG Münster, S. 67.
Sommer 2023
AfD-Europawahlprogramm 2024, in Magdeburg beschlossen, mit dem Kapitel “Remigration statt Talentabwerbung”, wie das Positionspapier der Partei selbst festhält.
25. November 2023
Potsdam. Roland Hartwig, Gerrit Huy, Ulrich Siegmund und Tim Krause im Raum, während Sellner die drei Gruppen vorstellt.
30. November 2023
Matthias Helferich, über die AfD-Liste gewählt, im Bundestag: “Wer es gut mit Deutschland meint, fordert Remigration, millionenfache Remigration, ein Bündel von politischen Maßnahmen, welche friedlich und rechtsstaatlich die Demografie harmonisieren, die Identität des Staatsvolkes … erhalten und die Transformation in einen Vielvölkerstaat verhindern.” Plenarprotokoll 20/141, S. 17783.
18. Dezember 2023
Der AfD-Bundesverband feiert einen “Tag der Remigration”: “Wer für seinen eigenen Lebensunterhalt aufkommt, sich anpasst und unsere Gesetze und Gebräuche respektiert, kann bleiben.” VG Köln, Rn. 267.
15. Januar 2024
“Remigration” wird Unwort des Jahres 2023.
Januar 2024
Die AfD-Fraktionschefs der ostdeutschen Landtage, darunter Höcke und Siegmund: “Remigration ist kein Unwort.” Sie kündigen mehr “Assimilationsdruck auf nichtintegrierte Ausländer” an. Siegmund: “Die Sozialmigration nach Deutschland muss beendet und rückabgewickelt werden.”
29. Januar 2024
Positionspapier des Bundesvorstands. Der Kernsatz beschränkt sich auf ausreisepflichtige Ausländer; die Punkte 2, 3 und 6 erfassen Menschen mit legalem Status.
13. Mai 2024
OVG Münster, 5 A 1218/22: Höckes Formulierung “legt … zumindest nahe, dass auf lange Sicht auch deutsche Staatsangehörige mit Migrationshintergrund Deutschland verlassen sollen.” Baums Forderung “knüpft nicht an die ausländische Staatsangehörigkeit an, sondern an die arabische Abstammung und den islamischen Glauben.” Das Faltblatt “7 Punkte zur Remigration” der Partei “belegt lediglich, dass der Begriff … in verschiedener Art und Weise gebraucht werden kann” (S. 66 bis 67).
14. August 2024
Bundesverwaltungsgericht, 6 VR 1.24, Rn. 40: Sellners Konzept spricht Menschen den sozialen Achtungsanspruch ab “anknüpfend an ihre ethnische Herkunft, an ihre Religionsausübung und letztlich auch an Gesichtspunkte wie ‘Rasse’.”
11. Januar 2025
Riesa. Das Wort kommt per Änderungsantrag ins Bundestagswahlprogramm, gegen den Entwurf des Vorstands. Alice Weidel: “Wenn es dann Remigration heißen soll, dann heißt es eben Remigration.”
24. Juni 2025
Bundesverwaltungsgericht, 6 A 4.24, Rn. 145: das Konzept “sieht Ausbürgerungen als Mittel zur Schaffung eines ethnisch-deutschen Volkes … vor.” Rn. 108: Sellner selbst sagt, es gehe ihm “gerade nicht nur um die Abschiebung Illegaler”.
November 2025
Gründungskongress der AfD-Jugendorganisation Generation Deutschland, Gießen. Vorstandsmitglied Julia Gehrckens: “Nur millionenfache Remigration schützt unsere Frauen und Kinder!”
Januar 2026
Lena Kotré, AfD-MdL Brandenburg, auf der Bühne mit Sellner: “Brauchen wir wirklich 82 Millionen Menschen in diesem Land? Reichen nicht erstmal 60 Millionen aus?”
26. Februar 2026
VG Köln, 13 L 1109/25, Rn. 57: Die Partei erklärt “millionenfach” mit über zwei Millionen, “aus derzeit Ausreisepflichtigen sowie Zugewanderten aus Syrien, Afghanistan und der Ukraine”. Rn. 268: “ausreisepflichtige Personen in entsprechender Anzahl auf dem Gebiet der Bundesrepublik nicht vorhanden sind.”
April 2026
Regierungsprogramm der AfD Sachsen-Anhalt. Eine “Rückkehr zum Abstammungsprinzip” im Staatsangehörigkeitsrecht (S. 38). Ausbürgerung von Doppelstaatlern “zum Regelfall” (S. 39). “Abschiebung ausreisepflichtiger Ausländer unter staatlichem Zwang”, eine Stabsstelle für Remigration und ein Remigrationsbeauftragter (S. 46 bis 47). Eine “Remigrationsoffensive für in Sachsen-Anhalt lebende Ukrainer” (S. 49).
9. September 2026
Merz im Bundestag. Am selben Tag nennt der stellvertretende Bundessprecher Stefan Möller es eine Gleichsetzung mit “mörderischen ethnischen Säuberungen”.
10. September 2026
Stephan Brandner erstattet Strafanzeige für “jedes einzelne Mitglied” der Fraktion und “Millionen Bürger”.
Die UN-Expertenkommission definierte ethnische Säuberung 1993 (S/25274, Abs. 55) als “rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area”: ein Gebiet ethnisch homogen zu machen, indem Personen bestimmter Gruppen mit Gewalt oder Einschüchterung aus dem Gebiet entfernt werden. Jedes Element dieser Definition hat eine Entsprechung in Aussagen, Programmen und Schriftsätzen der AfD.
UN-Definition 1993
Der Befund
ein Gebiet ethnisch homogen machen
Bundesverwaltungsgericht, Rn. 145: “Schaffung eines ethnisch-deutschen Volkes.” Helferich, Bundestag, 30. November 2023: “die Identität des Staatsvolkes erhalten und die Transformation in einen Vielvölkerstaat verhindern.” Kotré, Januar 2026: 60 Millionen statt 82.
mit Gewalt oder Einschüchterung
Regierungsprogramm Sachsen-Anhalt, S. 46: “unter staatlichem Zwang.” Sellner laut Bundesverwaltungsgericht, Rn. 102: “Assimilationsdruck”, “struktureller Druck”, “Remigrationsdruck”. Höcke, 2018: “wohltemperierter Grausamkeit”. Ostdeutsche Fraktionschefs, Januar 2024: mehr “Assimilationsdruck”.
Personen bestimmter Gruppen entfernen
VG Köln, Rn. 57: Syrer, Afghanen, Ukrainer. Positionspapier, Punkt 3: “aus Syrien und Afghanistan stammend”. OVG Münster, S. 67: “arabische Abstammung und den islamischen Glauben”. Bundesverwaltungsgericht, Rn. 40: “ethnische Herkunft”, “Religionsausübung”, “Rasse”.
aus dem Gebiet
Höcke laut OVG Münster, S. 67: Staatsangehörige mit Migrationshintergrund “Deutschland verlassen sollen”. Sellner laut Bundesverwaltungsgericht, Rn. 100 und 101: “Rückabwicklung des Migrationsgeschehens”, “Auffang- und Ankerzentren”.
Artikel 46 des Grundgesetzes schützt einen Bundestagsabgeordneten vor Strafverfolgung für alles, was er im Plenum sagt, mit einer Ausnahme: “verleumderische Beleidigungen”. Das Reichsstrafgesetzbuch von 1871 benutzte genau diese Worte als Bezeichnung des § 187, Verleumdung: eine unwahre Tatsachenbehauptung, wider besseres Wissen aufgestellt.
Merz’ Satz ist eine Meinung darüber, was ein politischer Begriff bedeutet, und § 187 erfasst nur Tatsachenbehauptungen. Die Tatsachen unter dieser Meinung sind nach den eigenen Schriftsätzen und Programmen der AfD wahr. Wissen um die Unwahrheit ist unmöglich, wenn ein Bundesgericht und die Unwort-Jury dasselbe vorher gesagt haben. Brandners Mitteilung nennt als Verletzte “jedes einzelne Mitglied” der Fraktion und “Millionen Bürger”. Das Bundesverfassungsgericht hat 1995 entschieden (1 BvR 1476/91), dass eine Gruppe dieser Größe als Einzelne nicht beleidigt werden kann. Der Text der Anzeige ist ihr eigenes Scheitern.
Alles Belege dafür, dass die AfD am lautesten klagt, wo sie am wenigsten versteht. Vielleicht ist genau das der Punkt: Sie hat nichts als Lärm. Es ist, als würde man mit “wir sind zum Führen ungeeignet” um die Führung werben, um dann niemandem Rechenschaft zu schulden, wenn man es versäumt zu verlieren und dann versäumt zu führen.
Die Historiker Andreas Rödder und Michael Wolffsohn sind hier besonders relevant, weil sie einwandten, ethnische Säuberung setze Gewalt voraus. Die Definition von 1993 sagt Gewalt oder Einschüchterung. Das Regierungsprogramm Sachsen-Anhalt sagt “unter staatlichem Zwang”. Höcke schrieb “Grausamkeit”. Eine Abschiebung führt die Polizei durch. Man denke das unter der AfD zu Ende.
Das NSDAP-Programm vom 24. Februar 1920 machte die Staatsbürgerschaft zu einer Frage des Blutes (Punkt 4), stellte alle anderen unter eine gesonderte Fremdengesetzgebung (Punkt 5), behielt sich die Ausweisung von Nicht-Staatsbürgern vor, wenn die Ernährung knapp wird (Punkt 7), und verlangte, dass alle seit dem 2. August 1914 Eingewanderten “sofort zum Verlassen des Reiches gezwungen werden” (Punkt 8). Das Regierungsprogramm der AfD Sachsen-Anhalt verlangt die Rückkehr zur Staatsbürgerschaft nach Abstammung und einen Remigrationsbeauftragten, der die Ausreisen verwaltet.
Das Bundesverwaltungsgericht stellte Druck, Verlust der Staatsangehörigkeit und Ausreise in die “Herkunftsländer” fest, angewandt auf Menschen, die nach “ethnischer Herkunft” und “Rasse” ausgewählt werden, zum Zweck der “Schaffung eines ethnisch-deutschen Volkes”.
Auf Englisch heißt das ethnic cleansing. Auf Deutsch: ethnische Säuberung.
Das Wort Remigration wird als neu ausgegeben, als dürfte die AfD einem alten, rassisch begründeten Programm ethnischer Säuberung von 1920 ein neues Gesicht geben.
The AfD gave the Verwaltungsgericht Köln in February a specific number to explain what its speakers mean by “millionenfache Remigration”: two million. They said it’s everyone currently required to leave Germany, plus everyone who arrived from Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine. The court recorded the party’s explanation at Rn. 57 and then at Rn. 268 replied that the number of people required to leave falls far short of the number. The party had actually been counting by country of origin. Mind the gap.
Seven months later Friedrich Merz said in the Bundestag what everyone knows the word means.
Meine Damen und Herren, das Wort “Remigration” ist nichts anderes als ein Synonym für ethnische Säuberung nach Herkunft und Hautfarbe.
Ladies and gentlemen, the word “remigration” is nothing other than a synonym for ethnic cleansing by origin and skin colour.
Plenarprotokoll 21/92, S. 11376. The AfD roared an objection from the benches. How dare they be held accountable for the words they use? How dare someone stop the wordplay and expose their propaganda?
Bernd Baumann: “Das ist rechtsstaatlich!” and “Das fordert kein Mensch!” Beatrix von Storch, as Merz said more deportations were coalition policy, claimed up was down: “das ist Remigration!” The next day the Fraktion filed a criminal complaint for “verleumderische Beleidigung.” Its press release describes the accusation as one of “Vertreibungen und Morde.” The party of hate speech supplied both words, claiming it was a crime to simply say back to them plainly the words they had laced with misdirection.
A monthly allowance for immigrants who choose to return to their country of origin. The government’s explanatory memorandum calls the decision “een geheel vrijwillig en persoonlijk besluit.”
German exile studies. Marita Krauss, Heimkehr in ein fremdes Land. Geschichte der Remigration nach 1945, C.H. Beck 2001
The return of people who fled political, racial or religious persecution under the Nazis and survived in exile.
Unwort des Jahres 2023, jury statement, 15 January 2024
A term from migration and exile research covering mainly voluntary return, “darunter die Rückkehr jüdischer Menschen aus dem Exil nach 1945,” taken over by the right as a euphemism for the expulsion of people with a migration history, citizens included. Guest juror Ruprecht Polenz, former CDU general secretary: the word hides “die Deportation aller Menschen mit vermeintlich falscher Hautfarbe oder Herkunft, selbst dann, wenn sie deutsche Staatsbürger sind.”
Carl Schmitt, 1926 preface to Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus
Democracy requires homogeneity and therefore “Ausscheidung oder Vertreibung des Heterogenen.” Sellner cites him as the source of his concept.
Three groups: asylum seekers, foreigners with residence, and 5 to 6 million German citizens judged unassimilated. Moved by “Assimilationsdruck,” a “strenge De-Islamisierungspolitik,” “struktureller Druck” on the Danish ghetto-law model, and loss of the passport, with statelessness “durchaus denkbar.” The court’s finding: “Staatsbürger zweiter Klasse,” “menschenwürdewidrig.”
“Rückführung ausreisepflichtiger Ausländer in ihre Heimat.” Point 3 of the same paper names people “aus Syrien und Afghanistan stammend” as “großes Remigrations-Potential.” Point 6 makes residence depend on earning a living.
The AfD adopted the word after courts had put its meaning on the record, perhaps because it was so clear what effect it had.
Date
Statement or ruling
August 2018
Björn Höcke, Nie zweimal in denselben Fluss: a “groß angelegtes Remigrationsprojekt,” to be carried out with “wohltemperierter Grausamkeit.” The OVG Münster later quotes his “gesamteuropäisches Remigrationsprojekt” and “Remigrationsprogramme, die natürlich De-Islamisierungsprogramme inkludieren” (p. 66).
September 2019
Christina Baum, now MdB: “eine sofortige Rückführung – Remigration, damit Deutschland weiter leben kann,” introduced with “Eine Arabisierung/Islamisierung findet n i c h t statt.” OVG Münster, p. 67.
Summer 2023
AfD Europawahlprogramm 2024 adopted in Magdeburg with the chapter “Remigration statt Talentabwerbung,” as the party’s own Positionspapier records.
25 November 2023
Potsdam. Roland Hartwig, Gerrit Huy, Ulrich Siegmund and Tim Krause in the room while Sellner presents the three groups.
30 November 2023
Matthias Helferich, elected on the AfD list, in the Bundestag: “Wer es gut mit Deutschland meint, fordert Remigration, millionenfache Remigration, ein Bündel von politischen Maßnahmen, welche friedlich und rechtsstaatlich die Demografie harmonisieren, die Identität des Staatsvolkes … erhalten und die Transformation in einen Vielvölkerstaat verhindern.” Plenarprotokoll 20/141, S. 17783.
18 December 2023
AfD Bundesverband celebrates a “Tag der Remigration”: “Wer für seinen eigenen Lebensunterhalt aufkommt, sich anpasst und unsere Gesetze und Gebräuche respektiert, kann bleiben.” VG Köln, Rn. 267.
15 January 2024
“Remigration” named Unwort des Jahres 2023.
January 2024
The AfD Fraktionschefs of the eastern Landtage, Höcke and Siegmund among them: “Remigration ist kein Unwort.” They pledge more “Assimilationsdruck auf nichtintegrierte Ausländer.” Siegmund: “Die Sozialmigration nach Deutschland muss beendet und rückabgewickelt werden.”
29 January 2024
Bundesvorstand Positionspapier. Core sentence limited to ausreisepflichtige Ausländer; points 2, 3 and 6 reach people with legal status.
13 May 2024
OVG Münster, 5 A 1218/22: Höcke’s wording “legt … zumindest nahe, dass auf lange Sicht auch deutsche Staatsangehörige mit Migrationshintergrund Deutschland verlassen sollen.” Baum’s demand “knüpft nicht an die ausländische Staatsangehörigkeit an, sondern an die arabische Abstammung und den islamischen Glauben.” The party’s “7 Punkte zur Remigration” leaflet “belegt lediglich, dass der Begriff … in verschiedener Art und Weise gebraucht werden kann” (pp. 66 to 67).
14 August 2024
Bundesverwaltungsgericht, 6 VR 1.24, Rn. 40: Sellner’s concept strips people of social respect “anknüpfend an ihre ethnische Herkunft, an ihre Religionsausübung und letztlich auch an Gesichtspunkte wie ‘Rasse’.”
11 January 2025
Riesa. The word enters the Bundestag program by floor amendment, over the Vorstand’s draft. Alice Weidel: “Wenn es dann Remigration heißen soll, dann heißt es eben Remigration.”
24 June 2025
Bundesverwaltungsgericht, 6 A 4.24, Rn. 145: the concept “sieht Ausbürgerungen als Mittel zur Schaffung eines ethnisch-deutschen Volkes … vor.” Rn. 108: Sellner himself says it is “gerade nicht nur um die Abschiebung Illegaler.”
November 2025
Founding congress of the AfD youth organisation Generation Deutschland, Gießen. Board member Julia Gehrckens: “Nur millionenfache Remigration schützt unsere Frauen und Kinder!”
January 2026
Lena Kotré, AfD MdL Brandenburg, on stage with Sellner: “Brauchen wir wirklich 82 Millionen Menschen in diesem Land? Reichen nicht erstmal 60 Millionen aus?”
26 February 2026
VG Köln, 13 L 1109/25, Rn. 57: the party explains “millionenfach” as over two million, “aus derzeit Ausreisepflichtigen sowie Zugewanderten aus Syrien, Afghanistan und der Ukraine.” Rn. 268: “ausreisepflichtige Personen in entsprechender Anzahl auf dem Gebiet der Bundesrepublik nicht vorhanden sind.”
April 2026
AfD Sachsen-Anhalt Regierungsprogramm. A “Rückkehr zum Abstammungsprinzip” in citizenship law (p. 38). Ausbürgerung of dual nationals “zum Regelfall” (p. 39). “Abschiebung ausreisepflichtiger Ausländer unter staatlichem Zwang,” a Stabsstelle für Remigration and a Remigrationsbeauftragter (pp. 46 to 47). A “Remigrationsoffensive für in Sachsen-Anhalt lebende Ukrainer” (p. 49).
9 September 2026
Merz in the Bundestag. The same day, deputy federal spokesman Stefan Möller calls it an equation with “mörderischen ethnischen Säuberungen.”
10 September 2026
Stephan Brandner files the criminal complaint on behalf of “jedes einzelne Mitglied” of the Fraktion and “Millionen Bürger.”
The UN Commission of Experts defined ethnic cleansing in 1993 (S/25274, para. 55) as “rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area.” Each element of that definition maps to the AfD public record.
UN definition, 1993
The record
“rendering an area ethnically homogeneous”
Bundesverwaltungsgericht, Rn. 145: “Schaffung eines ethnisch-deutschen Volkes.” Helferich, Bundestag, 30 November 2023: “die Identität des Staatsvolkes erhalten und die Transformation in einen Vielvölkerstaat verhindern.” Kotré, January 2026: 60 million instead of 82.
“by using force or intimidation”
Sachsen-Anhalt program, p. 46: “unter staatlichem Zwang.” Sellner via Bundesverwaltungsgericht, Rn. 102: “Assimilationsdruck,” “struktureller Druck,” “Remigrationsdruck.” Höcke, 2018: “wohltemperierter Grausamkeit.” Eastern Fraktionschefs, January 2024: more “Assimilationsdruck.”
“to remove persons of given groups”
VG Köln, Rn. 57: Syrians, Afghans, Ukrainians. Positionspapier, point 3: “aus Syrien und Afghanistan stammend.” OVG Münster, p. 67: “arabische Abstammung und den islamischen Glauben.” Bundesverwaltungsgericht, Rn. 40: “ethnische Herkunft,” “Religionsausübung,” “Rasse.”
“from the area”
Höcke via OVG Münster, p. 67: citizens with migration background “Deutschland verlassen sollen.” Sellner via Bundesverwaltungsgericht, Rn. 100 and 101: “Rückabwicklung des Migrationsgeschehens,” “Auffang- und Ankerzentren.”
Article 46 of the Grundgesetz shields a member of the Bundestag from prosecution for anything said in the chamber, with one exception, “verleumderische Beleidigungen.” The Reichsstrafgesetzbuch of 1871 used those exact words as the title of §187, Verleumdung: a false statement of fact, made knowing it is false.
Merz’s sentence is an opinion about what a political term means, and §187 reaches only statements of fact. The facts under the opinion are true on the AfD’s own filings and programs. Knowledge of falsity is impossible when a federal court and the Unwort jury said the same thing first. Brandner’s release names the injured parties as “jedes einzelne Mitglied” of the Fraktion and “Millionen Bürger.” The Bundesverfassungsgericht ruled in 1995 (1 BvR 1476/91) that a group of that size is beyond defamation as individuals. The complaint text is its own failure.
It’s all evidence that the AfD complains loudest when they understand things least. Perhaps the point is they have nothing other than noise to use. It’s like saying “we are unfit to lead” as a campaign to lead, so they can be unaccountable for failing to lose and then failing to lead.
Historians Andreas Rödder and Michael Wolffsohn in particular are relevant here because they objected that ethnic cleansing implies violence. The 1993 definition says force or intimidation. The Sachsen-Anhalt program says “unter staatlichem Zwang.” Höcke wrote “Grausamkeit.” An Abschiebung is carried out by police. Think about that under the AfD.
The NSDAP program of 24 February 1920 made citizenship a matter of blood (point 4), placed everyone else under a separate Fremdengesetzgebung (point 5), reserved the right to expel non-citizens when food ran short (point 7), and demanded that everyone who had immigrated since 2 August 1914 “sofort zum Verlassen des Reiches gezwungen werden” (point 8). The AfD’s Sachsen-Anhalt program demands a return to citizenship by descent and a Remigrationsbeauftragter to manage departures.
The BVerwG found pressure, loss of citizenship and departure to “Herkunftsländer,” applied to people selected by “ethnische Herkunft” and “Rasse,” for the purpose of “Schaffung eines ethnisch-deutschen Volkes.”
In English that is ethnic cleansing
The word Remigration is being claimed as new, as if the AfD should be allowed to put a new face on an old race-based ethnic cleansing program of 1920.
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