Austrian Freedom Front
The Austrian Freedom Front ( ÖFF ) was the name of a communist-dominated resistance movement against National Socialism that was made up of Austrian and German refugees in Belgium during the Second World War . Since the occupation of Belgium by the German Reich on May 10, 1940, secretly printed anti-fascist magazines were distributed in the German language, and from the beginning of 1944 people switched to armed struggle and formed partisan groups . The organization cooperated with the Belgian Resistance and was at times the largest Austrian resistance group in Europe.
prehistory
In 1940 there were numerous Austrian and German communists in exile in Belgium who had fled to the neutral country before National Socialism . When the German Wehrmacht began its offensive against the Netherlands and Belgium on May 10, 1940 , the Belgian authorities arrested all male German citizens that could be found in the country and accused them of being Hitler's fifth column , even if they were staunch opponents of National Socialism acted. The arrested were deported by freight train to southern France and interned there in the Gurs , St. Cyprien and Drancy camps. But just a few days later, the German troops, coming via the Netherlands, advanced to Belgium and occupied the country. The Belgian army surrendered on May 28, 1940.
Resistance group
Shortly afterwards, the first core of the resistance group was formed around those communist Austrians and Germans who were able to escape the wave of arrests of May 10, 1940. In consultation with the Belgian Resistance, the group was given the task of covertly printing German-language propaganda against National Socialism and distributing it to German soldiers in secret. The female comrades who were not arrested played a major role in the resistance work. This so-called “soldier's work” began as early as the end of 1940 and early 1941. The "scatter groups" distributed the printed weekly newspapers to places frequented by German soldiers, such as train stations and cinemas, and put them on parked German army vehicles or left them on benches near barracks. The “girl groups”, on the other hand, tried to address German soldiers in an inconspicuous way, for example by asking the time, and if a somewhat critical attitude to the war could be heard in the conversation, they arranged rendezvous with these soldiers in order to give them anti-fascist information material . They could then place the brochures inside the barracks or distribute them to like-minded comrades. This “girl's work” was the most dangerous part of the resistance work, because it could happen at any time that the soldier only entered into such a conversation as a pretense and then the Gestapo came to the agreed meeting . In fact, eight women from the group were arrested and deported to the concentration camp . Marianne Brandt, Jean Améry's partner , was killed during one of these actions. When the 20th deportation train to Auschwitz was attacked at night on April 19, 1943 near Boortmeerbeek , Régine Krohaben was able to jump out of the freight train and escape - however, 1631 Jews, Sinti and Roma from northern France were brought to Auschwitz with this transport .
The center of these resistance activities was Brussels , but a real distribution network was also established in the Belgian province. Jakob Zanger and his comrades Fürst and Kandel also had network maps for the entire Belgian railway network and thus brought the weekly publications to other cities in Belgium. The resistance group's publication was initially called “ The Truth ” and was printed in up to 12,000 copies a week, 9,000 of which were distributed in the Belgian province. After the Moscow Declaration , an additional sheet was added to the brochure with the title “ Austrian Freedom Front ”. From the end of 1943 another newspaper appeared with the name “ Free Austria ”. British and free Polish radio stations, which could be received in secret, served as sources of information.
Partisan group
In 1943 the work of the resistance group became more and more difficult as the German occupiers carried out more and more raids, on the one hand to find hidden Jews and on the other hand to send Belgian youths to Germany for forced labor . The group therefore began to arm themselves by assaulting German soldiers. The British secret service had begun smuggling weapons into the country and distributing them to partisan groups, but only to “white” partisans and not to “red”, i.e. communist ones.
At the end of 1943 and beginning of 1944 - the resistance group had grown to over 750 members, including social democrats, monarchists and apolitical emigrants - an Austrian partisan company was set up in Belgium to assassinate German military installations. With self-made explosive devices - Comrade Erich Ungar knew a lot about physics and chemistry - ammunition transporters, cars and military trains were blown up. From June 1944, this particularly disrupted the German defense efforts against the Allies who had landed in Normandy. Other activities were "smear campaigns", during which slogans were smeared on house walls in German near barracks and military facilities. One of these sayings was something like : " Enough died, enough marched and finally marched home ". When the Allied troops began to retake Belgium, the partisan group took an active part in the military struggle, for example the northern Belgian city of Arendonk was liberated from the Austrian Freedom Front.
Demobilization
When Belgium was finally liberated by the Allies at the beginning of 1945 after the end of the Ardennes offensive , the partisan group was demobilized. The leader of the resistance group, Karl Przibram , enjoyed such high prestige at that time that he was appointed as chargé d'affaires , i.e. as a temporary diplomatic representative for Austrian citizens in Belgium, until the newly founded Republic of Austria set up its own embassy in Brussels could. About two dozen members of the resistance group continued the fight, however, and went to Yugoslavia to join the Austrian partisan group around the Tyrolean Spanish fighter Max Bair . Through the Austrians from Belgium as well as captured Austrian Wehrmacht soldiers and escaped members of the Penal Battalion 999 , four more Austrian partisan battalions were set up in Yugoslavia under the leadership of Comrades Fürnberg and Franz Honner .
Known members
Individual evidence
- ↑ Andreas Hilger , Mike Schmeitzner, Clemens Vollnhals: Sovietization or Neutrality ?; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006, ISBN 978-3-525-36906-7 (page 56)
- ^ Pierre-Yves Lambert: Des Autrichiens dans la Résistance belge au nazisme (in French), RésistanceS
- ^ Alfred Klahr Society: Irma Schwager: "Girls' work" in France: In the struggle for Austria's freedom
- ↑ border history DG: Régine Krochmal -Widerstandskämpferin and survivors of the 20th deportation train
- ^ Alfred Klahr Gesellschaft: contemporary witness statement by Jakob Zanger from May 8, 1995
- ↑ Friedrich Stadler: Expelled reason. Emigration and exile of Austrian science, 1930–1940. Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History of Social Sciences, Lit, Berlin / Hamburg / Münster, 2004, ISBN 978-3-8258-7373-8 , p. 716.