page_title: Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime
section_title: 1989 crisis
hierarchical_section_title: Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime / History / 1989 crisis
caption_attribution_description: English: Adolphe Low, Spanish Civil War veteran, German Resistance fighter and member of the Legion of Honor, ANACR, Strasbourg, speaks to delegates at the Congress to Unite, October 2002 Deutsch: Adolphe Low, Spanienkämpfer, Antifaschistischer Widerstandskämpfer und Ritter der Ehrenlegion, ANACR, Strasbourg spricht zu den Delegierten des Vereinigungskongresses, Oktober 2002
context_page_description: The Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime/Federation of Antifascists is a German political confederation founded in 1947 and based in Berlin. The VVN-BdA, formerly the VVN, emerged from victims' associations in Germany founded by political opponents to Nazism after the Second World War and the end of the Nazi dictatorship.
  During the Cold War, the VVN was the subject of political struggles between East and West Germany. In the West, the association was seen as dominated by the Communist Party; in the East, the VVN was accused of spying. In 1953, the VVN was abolished in the GDR and the Committee of Antifascist Resistance Fighters was founded in its place.
  Since 2002, the association has extended to cover the whole of Germany, including camp communities of former prisoners of the concentration camps as incorporated associations. The VVN-BdA claims to be the biggest and oldest antifascist organization in the Federal Republic of Germany.
context_section_description: In 1989, it became officially known that most of the VVN's work at the federal level was financed through funds from the DDR. With the end of this funding, came a financial crisis that brought VVN to the brink of dissolution. The full-time staff had to be laid off. According to the 1989 Verfassungsschutzbericht of Lower Saxony (page 26), until the fall of communism, all applications for full-time VVN employees had been reviewed and approved by the Chairman of the German Communist Party (DKP). The president and secretariat of the national board of the VVN-BdA resigned in January 1990. The organization then voted to continue the work with reduced means and a new organizational structure.
  The absence of funding by the DDR opened the door for non-dogmatic influence; the Union became open to unaffiliated anti-fascists.
caption: Adolphe Low, Anti-fascist Resistance fighter and Knight of the Legion of Honor, ANACR, Strasbourg speaks to the delegates at the unifying congress, October 2002
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