Albin Lüdke

Albin Lüdke (born March 25, 1907 in Schneidemühl , † March 18, 1974 in Hamburg ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Live and act

Born near Posen , Lüdke worked as a painter in Düsseldorf , where he was active in the KPD in the 1930s . After the seizure of power , the National Socialists accused him of continuing the forbidden Red Aid in Germany and for this reason imprisoned him in the Börgermoor concentration camp in June 1933 . The imprisonment ended on December 22nd, 1933. A little later he distributed a leaflet entitled “Save the 10 Gerresheimer Workers”, who were to be executed after bloody disputes with the SA. For this reason, Lüdke was imprisoned again on January 20, 1934. The Hamm Higher Regional Court judged the distribution of the notes as "preparation for high treason" and imposed a 15-month prison sentence on Lüdke. The imprisonment in Remscheid-Lüttringhausen ended on April 21, 1935. On July 2, 1935 he was arrested again. Lüdke spent four weeks in police custody and was then transferred to the Esterwegen concentration camp . Since the judiciary was supposed to take over the concentration camp, Lüdke and all other inmates were transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on September 1, 1936 . Since he was considered a “political backslider”, Lüdke received a place in the “isolation”. In these barracks, which had been outsourced to the camp, there were numerous communists whom the SS repeatedly mistreated. The Jehovah's Witnesses , of which he was the block elder, showed him great respect because, although he did not share their faith, he accepted it.

After almost four years in prison in Sachsenhausen, Lüdke was transferred to the Neuengamme concentration camp on June 4, 1940 . As a member of the painters' column, he was appointed foreman eight weeks later and later Kapo . Even if he could have hit the inmates, he made no use of it and did not enrich himself with them. After the end of the war, fellow prisoners said that he had always acted calmly and prudently, even under pressure from the SS. In January 1943 Lüdke was promoted to "Arbeits Einsatzkapo". In the SS leader's office he organized the prisoners' work and manipulated transport lists so that life-threatening inmates were transferred to subcamps. Shortly before the end of World War II , Lüdke was assigned to the Dirlewanger SS special unit . With this troop he went to the SS barracks in Hamburg-Langenhorn on April 29, 1945 . A few days later he was able to escape.

Immediately after the end of the war, Lüdke and the British occupying forces prepared trials against concentration camp guards. In the courtyard of the court prison in Altona , he named the camp's guards during comparisons. From March 18 to May 3, 1946, he testified as the first witness at the main Neuengamme trial . On three days of the trial he described the organization of the concentration camp, made statements on the ten most important charges and the personalities of the 14 accused. During an on-site visit, he explained the grounds of the concentration camp to the judiciary.

Lüdke later lived in Hamburg, where he opened a small painting business. As a staunch communist, he was committed to the KPD and, after it was banned in 1956, received a three-month suspended sentence for illegal activities for the party. On July 6, 1948, he co-founded the Neuengamme Working Group and served as the first chairman of the association until his death in March 1974.

literature

• Reimer Möller: Lüdke, Albin . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 6 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-1025-4 , p. 198-199 .