Bruno Bachler

Bruno Bachler (born October 9, 1924 in Insterburg ; † November 15, 2011 ) was a German communist resistance fighter against National Socialism , a prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camp and a party functionary of the KPD .

Life

Bachler grew up in an East Prussian communist-oriented family that was committed to fighting the emergence of National Socialism even after moving from Insterburg to Duisburg . As a child, Bruno was a member of the Red Young Pioneers . On February 27, 1933, the night of the Reichstag fire , his father was taken into “ protective custody ” and sent to one of the early concentration camps, where he died of the consequences of imprisonment. After attending elementary school, Bruno Bachler learned the profession of lathe operator at the Mannesmann company .

After the beginning of the Second World War , he joined the Edelweiss Pirates , a resistant youth group. When this membership became known, the prosecutor was investigating him. After he had passed his journeyman's examination in 1942 , he was drafted into the Wehrmacht . During his training as recruits, he collected leaflets secretly dropped by the British, which he distributed to households in the vicinity of his barracks. He was arrested and brought before a court, which sentenced him to one year in prison with parole . Initially he was interned in Buchenwald concentration camp for three months, after which he was assigned to the punishment company of the 16th Panzer Division on the Eastern Front and deployed there to clear mines. One day he refused to enter the minefield, was shot while trying to escape and was taken to a hospital with a serious stomach injury and then to a replacement unit in Braunschweig . From there he deserted and went to Saxony , where he waited for the Red Army to march .

After the end of the war, Bachler returned to Duisburg in 1945. Here he was one of the founding members of the KPD. He also gathered young people in the Neue Jugend group and founded the Free German Youth in Duisburg in 1946 . When this was banned in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1951 , he continued to work illegally. He was arrested again and sentenced to three months in prison. Even after the KPD was banned in 1956, he was again imprisoned for three months for illegally continuing political work in the sense of high treason. A few years later he was sentenced by a court to thirteen months' imprisonment for illegally cooperating with the GDR trade union FDGB , which he spent in Kleve prison. An additional five months' imprisonment was added to this for an old offense: organizing vacation stays for children from the Federal Republic of Germany in the GDR.

Bachler took part in the Easter marches and called for protests against military operations by the Bundeswehr . At meetings of the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN), he reported to young people about his resistance to the Edelweiss pirates and about his stay in a concentration camp.

Bachler was married. He died on November 15, 2011.

Honors

Bruno Bachler was awarded the 2006 Rhineland Taler of the Regional Association of Rhineland excellent.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Off to the Easter March. Call for Easter March 2009.
2. ↑ "... because once the day comes: then we are free!" / Buchenwald - a concentration camp / Events on the past and present. Bielefeld, May 13, 2005. from: hiergeblieben.de Retrieved July 26, 2011
3. ↑ http://www.derwesten.de/staedte/duisburg/trauer-um-verstorbenen-nazigegner-bruno-bachler-id6084306.html
4. ↑ Honor for humanity and moral courage. ( Memento of the original from March 4, 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. Reason for awarding the Rhineland thaler  

Web links

• Bruno Bachler's biography
• Report from a witness event with Bruno Bachler