Two documents can describe the same incident. One is written six weeks later: “It was around the end of March. The cashier said something like I should be grateful to be served.” The other is typed into a phone that evening: “Tuesday 26 March, 18:40, supermarket on the corner, cashier with name badge ‘R.’. Exact words: ‘People like you should be grateful we serve you at all.’ Customer behind me heard it. I left without my shopping.”
The first note is honest. The second can be acted on. The difference is not education or eloquence. It is time.
Writing about discrimination can feel like being pulled back into it. Still, a record keeps later options open: advice, complaint, legal action, or simply being able to trust your own memory when someone tries to blur it. Writing commits you to nothing.
The incident log at a glance
A usable record of a discrimination incident contains:
- A contemporaneous entry — written the same day if at all possible
- The exact words that were said, marked clearly as quotes
- Date, time, and place, as precisely as you can pin them
- Who was there — names, roles, or descriptions of possible witnesses
- The impact on you — sleep, health, work, what you now avoid
- The papers around it, kept together in one place
Three qualities make a log useful: it is contemporaneous (written close to the event), specific (exact words, exact times, real names), and complete (facts and consequences kept together). Everything below serves those three qualities.
1. Write it down while it’s fresh
Memory is a witness that quietly changes its statement. Within days, exact wording blurs into gist; within weeks, dates merge and details move between events. That does not mean you are unreliable. It means you are human. But an adviser, an ombudsperson, or a court will weigh “he said, word for word” differently from “he said something like”.
In German practice this kind of record has a name: a Gedächtnisprotokoll — a “memory protocol”, a written account made from memory as soon after the event as possible. The term matters because advisers and lawyers will ask whether you have one, and because a note demonstrably made on the day carries weight that a later reconstruction cannot recover.
Same day is best. Within 48 hours is good. If weeks have already passed, write down what you remember now and date the note honestly — “written on 12 May about an incident in late March” is still far better than nothing, and stops further decay. Don’t backdate; an honest late note is credible, a polished one that pretends to be early is not.
The format is unimportant. A notes app, an email to yourself, a paper notebook — whatever you will actually use. Think of each entry as a note for the future version of you who may need to explain this to a stranger.
2. Capture the exact words
Quotes are the spine of the record. Where you remember the wording, write it inside quotation marks. Where you only remember the meaning, say so plainly: “He said — not these exact words — that I wouldn’t fit the team.” That honesty makes your quotes more believable, not less.
If something was said in another language, record it in that language first, then add your translation. The original wording is the evidence; the translation is a convenience.
Words are not the only language. Note tone, gestures, what happened directly before and after: who laughed, who went silent, whether the remark was repeated when you objected. “She rolled her eyes and turned to the next customer while I was mid-sentence” is a fact, and facts of that kind are recordable.
3. Pin down date, time, and place
“Last month at work” locates nothing. “Tuesday 26 March, around 18:40, at the till nearest the entrance” can be checked against shift plans, calendars, and other people’s memories. If you don’t know the exact time, anchor it: after the team meeting, before the kindergarten pick-up. Your phone often knows more than you do — a transport app, a message you sent on the way home, a calendar entry can all recover a timestamp.
Place matters at the same resolution: not just “the Jobcenter” but which office, which counter, which floor.
4. Note who was there
Witnesses turn your account into more than your word. Record names where you know them; where you don’t, record what would let someone be found later: “woman in a red coat, roughly 60, paying at the next till”, “the colleague who shares the office with K.”
If the moment allows it — and only if it feels safe — a single sentence to a bystander can anchor their memory: “You heard that, right?” You are not asking them to commit to anything. Write down their reaction either way; “the security guard looked away when I asked” is itself part of the record.
Be realistic: some witnesses will later not want to be involved, especially where jobs or housing depend on the person who discriminated. Record who was present anyway. Whether and how to approach them is a decision for later — ideally with an adviser. You decide, and so do they.
5. Record what it did to you
Many people document the event and skip its aftermath, as if exhaustion and dread were not part of what happened. They are. Under the AGG — the Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz, Germany’s General Equal Treatment Act — compensation can cover non-material harm, and any adviser or counsellor you ever speak to will need to understand the weight you have been carrying.
So the log includes you: the nights you slept badly, the morning you called in sick, the route you now take to avoid that shop, the appointment you didn’t book, the meeting you sat through with your heart pounding. If you saw a doctor — for sleep, anxiety, blood pressure, anything plausibly connected — note the date and keep the paperwork. You are not performing injury; you are recording consequences that are as real as the words that caused them.
6. Keep the papers together
Evidence scattered across a kitchen drawer, three email accounts, and a coat pocket is evidence half lost. Choose one container — a physical folder, a single digital folder, or both — and give it one rule: one folder, one timeline. Everything goes in dated, newest on top: log entries, letters, payslips, rejection messages, doctor’s notes, your own sent complaints and the replies.
Two habits pay off later. First, a simple index page — one line per document with its date — so an adviser can grasp the whole story in a minute. Second: when you submit anything to anyone, send copies and keep the originals.
One boundary worth naming here: if the discrimination happened online, or your evidence is digital — screenshots, chat exports, posts that may be deleted — capturing it so it holds up is its own craft, with its own pitfalls around timestamps, URLs, and storage. Digital Dignity Lab has a detailed guide to exactly that, and we won’t repeat it here.
7. One good log entry, worked
Here is what the pieces look like assembled. Soraya — a composite example, not a real person — was followed through a drugstore by a security guard and stopped at the exit for a bag check while other customers walked out freely. Her entry that evening:
Thursday 8 February, approx. 17:25. Drugstore at the main station, ground floor.
Security guard (male, mid-40s, grey uniform, no visible name badge) followed me from the entrance through three aisles, staying about two metres behind. At the exit he stepped in front of me and said: “Open your bag, we’ve had problems with people like you.” Exact words. Two customers left ahead of me without being stopped; one — a man with a green backpack — slowed down and watched.
I opened the bag. Nothing, obviously. No apology. I asked for his name; he said, “Not necessary,” and turned away.
Asked at the till for the store manager: not on site. Cashier (name badge “M. T.”) gave me a customer-service card.
Since then: shaky on the tram home, cancelled my evening plans, slept maybe four hours. I have not gone back; I now shop ten minutes further away.
In the folder: photo of the customer-service card; receipt from the purchase I made there earlier that week (shows I am a regular customer).
Notice what makes it work: the exact words, the times, the describable witnesses, the refusal recorded as a fact, the impact stated without apology — and the small supporting papers already filed.
Where a log can go
A record obliges you to nothing. Some people document and never act, and the log still does quiet work — it ends the gaslighting question of “did that really happen the way I remember?” Others take it to an anti-discrimination Beratungsstelle (advice centre), contact the Antidiskriminierungsstelle des Bundes, raise an internal complaint, or pursue legal action.
One deadline is worth knowing even if you decide nothing today: for employment-related claims under the AGG, §15 sets a two-month time limit for asserting claims in writing. This article is general information, not legal advice for your case — the deadline above is the general rule, and your situation may differ, so get advice early rather than late.
Two neighbouring guides matter at this border. If your incident involved the police — a stop, a search, an arrest — the record needs officer identification, search details, and medical evidence, and Justice Access Centre’s guide to documenting police encounters covers that ground properly. And how any of this evidence is weighed legally — what counts as an indication under the AGG, what shifts the burden of proof — is also Justice Access Centre’s territory, not ours.
The realistic next step is small: tonight, write the most recent incident only. Do not reconstruct months of history in one sitting. One dated entry, one folder started. The rest can follow at your pace.