Adolphe Low
Adolphe Low (born July 21, 1915 in Cottbus as Adolf Löw ; † November 11, 2012 in Strasbourg ) was a Franco-German anti-fascist resistance fighter . He was a member of the interbrigades in the Spanish Civil War and a fighter of the French resistance movement .
Life
Adolphe Low was born in Cottbus in 1915 as the youngest son in a family with five other siblings. He came into contact with the Jewish anti-fascist youth movement very early on and joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany , the youth organization of the KPD . At the age of 16 Adolphe Low was imprisoned for the first time in the police prison on Alex for taking part in an illegal gathering of Jewish anti-fascists from Poland.
He decided to leave Germany when his parents' home was searched and he was about to be arrested again. Adolphe was not at home during this arrest operation; he could be warned and initially fled to Neudorf, a district of Strasbourg . Persecuted there as an illegal emigrant by the French police and authorities, he came to Paris with the last of his money and was accepted into a Jewish asylum. He was arrested by the police several times and expelled from the country, but kept returning to Paris and found employment in a Jewish canteen.
In September 1936, a rally in support of the Frente Popular was held in a sports stadium , attended by 50,000 people and Dolores Ibárruri spoke. This impressed the 21-year-old Adolphe Low. He decided to join the International Brigades . In October 1936 Adolphe Low received the written confirmation and drove to the port in Marseille and crossed over to Alicante on an old coal steamer . He was assigned as an infantryman in the Edgar André Battalion , 1st Company , 35th Brigade. His company commander was Heinz Hoffmann , who later became Minister of Defense of the GDR . That night, the first attack by the Franquists began, in which the young Belgian, with whom Adolphe had befriended on the crossing and who fought in the same unit as he, was shot in the stomach with a dum-dum bullet and was in the arms of Adolphes passed away.
Adolphe was deployed continuously for two years, including in Jarama , Belchite , Teruel and Guadalajara . Of the 600 interbrigadists with whom Adolphe was embarked for Alicante, only 20 survived. He was not interned in a camp, but was able to escape to Paris as a "French" because of his good knowledge of French. There he was arrested and locked up in the Les Milles camp. In 1940 he was embarked in the Foreign Legion in Algeria.
From 1943 he fought in the Resistance . Adolphe Low fled to the French Guéret ( Département Creuse ) and was one of the first fighters of the Francs-tireurs et partisans (FTP) Creuse. Wanted by the police, Adolphe Low hid in the surrounding forests and was provided with food and clothing by parts of the population. He played a crucial role in the liberation of Guéret on June 7, 1944.
On May 8, 1945, Adolphe Low, stateless since the Spanish Civil War, received French citizenship by a personal decree from General Charles de Gaulle .
His parents and a sister were deported to Auschwitz and murdered. Adolphe Low was married and had two children. He and his wife were active members of the French anti-fascist organization Association nationale des anciens combattants de la Resistance (ANACR). In 1996, like all surviving Spain fighters, he received honorary Spanish citizenship, and in 2005 he was accepted into the French Legion of Honor .
literature
- Adolphe Low: My way to Spain. In: "information" Studienkreis Deutscher Resistance 1933–1945 e. V., Issue 49, May 1999 ( full text ; PDF; 141 kB)
Web links
- Des étrangers dans la Resistance
- Adolphe Low, the last German fighter in Spain, died at the age of 97
Individual evidence
- ↑ Against Hitler. Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Free Germany" movement (PDF; 894 kB) Short biographies. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2005.
- ↑ a b Association of those persecuted by the Ortenau Nazi regime ( Memento of the original dated May 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Kehl in the Third Reich. A border town and its excesses 1933-45 ( Memento of the original from April 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Stattzeitung für Südbaden On the Internet, issue 55, 2003-11
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Low, Adolphe |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Loew, Adolf |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German interbrigadist in the Spanish Civil War and resistance fighter of the Resistance |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 21, 1915 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | cottbus |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 11, 2012 |
| Place of death | Strasbourg |