Anna Hirsch (resistance fighter)

Anna Hirsch

Anna Hirsch (born November 14, 1895 in Lobendau , Northern Bohemia; † November 13, 1942 in Auschwitz concentration camp ) was a German communist and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime .

Life

Hirsch attended elementary school in Mügeln (Pirna district). She later worked as a housekeeper and shoe stepper. Already in her youth she was interested in problems of the working class. In 1931 she joined the KPD . In 1932 she was elected to the Dohna community college for the KPD .

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , Hirsch joined the resistance group around Rudolf Gebauer in Dohna. The Gestapo arrested Hirsch on September 26, 1938. After a year and a half in custody, she was transferred to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1940. There she got work in the prisoner's kitchen. Six months later the SS overseer Gräfe stopped her when she gave a Polish prisoner something to eat. She was therefore locked in the bunker for 14 days and then sent to the punishment block for six months. In March 1942 she and 17 other women were deported to Auschwitz . Here, too, she worked in the prisoner's kitchen and was appointed by the camp elder, Eva Laube, to be responsible for the bread chamber. Hirsch got this post because she guaranteed that every prisoner received the portion he was entitled to.

A typhus epidemic had raged in the camp since June 1942 . Hirsch died on November 13th as a result of the disease.

Honors

• A street in Dohna is named after Anna Hirsch.
• A memorial plaque is attached to her former home (Ernst-Thälmann-Str. 128).
• Her name can also be found on the memorial for the "Victims of Fascism" inaugurated in September 1952 on the market in Dohna.
• The office of Diakonie Pirna is located in the former "Anna-Hirsch-Haus" in Pirna (Schandauer Straße 15).
• The Anna Hirsch Women's Prize of Left Saxon Switzerland - Eastern Ore Mountains, which has been awarded since 2013, is named after her.

literature

• Author collective: Chronicle 1933–1945. On the history of the anti-fascist resistance struggle on the territory of the former Pirna administration . Socialist Unity Party of Germany, district leadership Pirna, committee of anti-fascist resistance fighters of the GDR district committee Pirna / Sebnitz 1983.
• District leadership of the SED Pirna, Commission for the Investigation of the history of the local labor movement (ed.): Memorials, monuments, memorials and Mahnstätten the labor movement and the anti-fascist resistance movement in the circle Pirna . 2nd revised edition, Pirna 1984.
• Ulrike Puvogel, Martin Stankowski: Memorials for the Victims of National Socialism. Documentation II: Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, Thuringia . Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2000, p. 642.

Web links

• Memorial plaque for Anna Hirsch on the memorial site.