Ernst Rambow

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Ernst Rambow (born April 8, 1887 in Pampow ; † November 12, 1945 in Berlin ) was a German KPD functionary and resistance fighter against National Socialism, who worked as an informant for the Gestapo from 1940 .

Life

Like his father, Rambow became a shoemaker. After participating in the First World War , he joined the USPD in 1919 and switched to the KPD in the following year , where he also worked as an organization manager, cashier and defense officer. Until 1927 he earned his living as an employee in the Wertheim department store , AEG , the tram and a shoe factory. He then worked as a party functionary in the central committee of the KPD, in the AM apparatus (KPD intelligence service) under Hans Kippenberger, and in the party's news department in Berlin. After a period of unemployment, he officially worked for the Soviet trade agency from 1931. Since he rejected the KPD's works council policy, he finally resigned from his party functions.

In the course of the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , at the end of February 1933 he was sent to the Sonnenburg concentration camp as a so-called protective prisoner , from which he was released in the summer of 1933. Then he worked under Paul Bertz in Hamburg in the resistance against National Socialism and was arrested in Altona at the end of 1933 . As a result, he was sentenced to a six-year prison term and released from prison in Bremen in 1940 . He then worked in his profession in Berlin-Lichtenberg , where he was recruited by the Gestapo as an informant. He succeeded u. a. To betray Anton Saefkow , whose trust he had in January 1944 because of his former resistance activities, to the Gestapo. Through Saefkow, whom he knew, Rambow had succeeded in participating in the operational management of the KPD in Germany and thus gained extensive insight into this organization.

Rambow also betrayed, among others, Adolf Reichwein and Julius Leber , who were active in the resistance against National Socialism, to the Gestapo after the Gestapo had met on June 22, 1944 with the operational management of the KPD in Germany. On the way to another meeting, Reichwein, Leber and many other members of the KPD's operational management were arrested by the Gestapo, sentenced to death after a show trial before the People's Court and executed . Rambow is said to have betrayed a total of 280 resistance fighters in Hamburg, Berlin, Landsberg and Hanover to the Gestapo. After their arrest, Saefkow and Jacob had warned their fellow prisoners about Rambow, which was also leaked out in September 1944. Rambow had received a pistol from the Gestapo and had been paid 5,800 RM for his spy service in the first half of 1944 .

After the Battle of Berlin and liberation from National Socialism , Rambow found employment at the Charlottenburg District Court in May 1945 . Furthermore, he became a member of the KPD again and on July 4, 1945 tried to gain recognition as a victim of fascism . Unmasked as a Gestapo spy, Rambow was arrested at the end of July 1945 and sentenced to death by a Soviet military tribunal on September 25, 1945 . After his appeal for clemency was rejected on October 29, 1945, the sentence was carried out on November 12, 1945 by shooting.

literature

  • Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst (ed.): German communists . Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online ).
  • Annette Neumann, Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow: The Saefkow-Jacob-Bästlein-Organization 1942 to 1945 , in: Hans Coppi , Stefan Heinz (ed.): The forgotten resistance of the workers. Trade unionists, communists, social democrats, Trotskyists, anarchists and forced laborers . Dietz, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-320-02264-8 , pp. 144–157, in particular pp. 154 ff.
  • Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Weigelt: Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944–1947). A historical-biographical study . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-36968-5 , short biographies on the accompanying CD, there pp. 534-535.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For details cf. Annette Neumann, Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow: The Saefkow-Jacob-Bästlein-Organization 1942 to 1945 , in: Hans Coppi , Stefan Heinz (ed.): The forgotten resistance of the workers. Trade unionists, communists, social democrats, Trotskyists, anarchists and forced laborers . Dietz, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-320-02264-8 , pp. 144–157, here p. 154 ff.
  2. ^ A b Hermann Weber, Andreas Herbst: German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 , Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, p. 700.
  3. ↑ Markus Mohr / Klaus Viehmann (eds.): Spy - a little social history , Association A, Berlin / Hamburg 2004.
  4. ↑ Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Weigelt: Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944-1947). A historical-biographical study , Göttingen 2015, p. 535
personal data
SURNAME Rambow, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German KPD functionary, resistance fighter and Gestapo informant (1940–1945)
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Pampow
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 1945
Place of death Berlin