Benno Prieß

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Benno Prieß (born May 29, 1928 in Bützow ; † March 31, 2015 in Calw ) was a German victim of Stalinism , author and editor .

Live and act

The 17-year-old Benno Prieß was arrested in April 1946 in his hometown of Bützow in Mecklenburg . After months of imprisonment at the Soviet NKVD in Güstrow , associated with interrogation and torture , a Soviet military tribunal sentenced him to ten years in a labor camp for belonging to werewolf and for “anti-Soviet propaganda”. With Benno Prieß, nine other boys from Bützow between the ages of 15 and 17 were convicted. Only two of them survived imprisonment. Priess went through and suffered through the Soviet and GDR penal institutions / NKVD special camps in Torgau , Bautzen , Sachsenhausen and Waldheim .

After his release in 1954, he did not stay long in his hometown and went to West Germany . There he found work, started a family and lived in Calw. From 1989/1990 - not least under the impression of the mass graves uncovered on the floor of the former special camps since the fall of the Wall - Prieß participated intensively in coming to terms with the post-war history of the Soviet occupation zone and later GDR. On the basis of his own experiences and research, he published two books that met with great interest and accordingly recorded several editions. Priess kept a promise that he said he had given to his fellow prisoners who had died there in the NKVD camp. He and his fellow prisoners from Bützow were rehabilitated in 1995 by the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.

Awards

  • 1989: Merit Medal of the Federal Cross of Merit
  • 1994: Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon
  • 2005: Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class

Fonts

  • (Ed.): Innocent in the death camps of the NKVD 1946–1954. Torgau, Bautzen, Sachsenhausen, Waldheim . Röhm, Sindelfingen 2005, ISBN 3-937267-06-9 .
  • (Ed.): Shot at dawn. Arrested, tortured, convicted, shot. “Werewolf” fates of young people in Central Germany . Röhm, Sindelfingen 2005, self-published, co-edited by the State Commissioner for the Documents of the State Security Service of the GDR and the Foundation for the Processing of the SED Dictatorship, Berlin. ISBN 3-937267-05-0 .

literature

  • Ute Hartig: Benno Prieß, a former Bützower, keeps a promise from the NKVD death camp , Mecklenburger Magazin, Schwerin 1995. Also printed in: Benno Prieß: Shot at dawn . Self-published, Calw 2002. ISBN 3-926802-36-7 . Pages 192 to 202.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Priess, Benno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German victim of Stalinism, author and editor
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Bützow
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 2015
Place of death Calw