Bruno Baum

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Bruno Baum 1950

Bruno Baum , pseudonym Fritz Anders and Walter Schwarz (born February 13, 1910 in Berlin ; † December 13, 1971 in Potsdam ) was a German KPD and SED functionary and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

youth

Baum was the son of a Jewish tailor and ironer. From 1916 to 1924 he attended a Jewish boys' school in Berlin and then completed an apprenticeship as an electrician until 1928. He practiced this profession from 1929 to 1930. He was a member of the German Metalworkers' Association and joined the KJVD and the Red Young Front in 1926 . In 1927 he became a member of the KPD, resigned the following year from the Jewish community and attended the Reichsparteischule of the KPD "Rosa-Luxemburg" in Dresden . In 1929 he became a member of the Red Front Fighter League (RFB) and subdistrict leader and Gau leader of the Red Young Front Berlin-Brandenburg. Repeatedly arrested, he was sentenced to one month in prison in 1931 for continuing to operate the RFB.

Between 1933 and 1934 he was head of the KJVD-UB Berlin-Friedrichshain and an instructor at Siemens . From the end of 1934 he attended the International Lenin School in Moscow for a year and then worked illegally under the code names Fritz Anders and Walter Schwarz together with Gerhard Rolack , Erich Honecker and Kurt Hager .

Condemnation and Resistance

On December 4, 1935, Baum was arrested along with Honecker and Edwin Lautenbach . Baum spent 18 months in custody in Plötzensee, today's Plötzensee correctional facility . In the hearing on 7./8. In June 1937 he was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment before the second senate of the People's Court due to Honecker's statements about his function in the KJVD for “preparing for high treason ”. Honecker received a ten-year prison sentence in the same trial. From 1937 to 1943 Baum was imprisoned in the Brandenburg-Görden prison and then transferred to Auschwitz .

In the main camp of Auschwitz , Baum worked as an electrician for the “new laundry” and thus had relative freedom of movement in the camp. In the summer of 1944, Baum joined the leadership of the so-called Kampfgruppe Auschwitz for Ernst Burger , who was preparing his escape . a. further consisted of the Polish socialist Józef Cyrankiewicz and later the two Austrian communists Heinz Dürmayer , camp elder in the main camp, and Ludwig Soswinski . The resistance organization in the main camp maintained an organization network with other work details to collect news.

Through contact with Poles around Witold Pilecki , who transmitted shortwave from the camp and from Krakow to London, the group transmitted messages to Western Europe. However, these were only used for propaganda purposes by the Allies with the opening of the second front on June 6, 1944 ( D-Day ) . The group formed an "editorial committee", consisting of Arpad Haasz and Otto Heller , who wrote essays for it. Baum edited the articles in his workshop and passed them on to Cyrankiewicz. The information was sent twice a week.

On January 18, 1945, the Auschwitz concentration camp was "evacuated" and Baum was brought to the Mauthausen concentration camp , where he headed the international committee of the sick camp. Baum was liberated by US troops on May 5, 1945 .

GDR

After the end of the war, Baum was from 1945 to 1949 secretary for culture and education of the KPD district leadership and political employee of the training department of the KPD's central committee. From 1946 to 1951 he was a member of the state leadership of the KPD and, after the unification party congress on April 22, 1946, a member of the Berlin SED state leadership. From 1949 he was city councilor for economy at the Magistrate of Greater Berlin , the city administration of East Berlin . In 1951 he became secretary of the SED district leadership for Greater Berlin and remained in this position until 1959. From 1953, he worked for the West Berlin area . As a party functionary of the GDR , Baum was involved in the planning of the Stalinallee in Berlin in 1952 . The jury favored Egon Hartmann's design .

In the spring of 1953, after Stalin's death and in preparation for Walter Ulbricht's 60th birthday, Baum called for a “voluntary” increase in the labor standard by 10% while real wages were reduced by 30%. Although the end of Baum's “wooden hammer methods” was called for on June 14th in New Germany , the SED stuck to the norms. Baum classified every protest as "class hostile". The June 17th uprising broke out three days later .

In 1957 Baum was a member of the People's Chamber (until 1963) and a year later a member of the Central Committee of the SED. Baum was a member of the Central Committee until his death. From March 1959 to June 1960 he acted as head of department in the Ministry for Foreign Trade and Internal German Trade (MAI) and from July 1960 as a member of the SED district leadership in Potsdam . There he was secretary for economics and headed the office for industry and construction. Until 1963, Baum studied electrical engineering at the engineering college for heavy current engineering in Velten -Hohenschöpping.

After the end of the war, Baum married the communist Erika (* 1924 in Vienna). From 1948 he was a member of the VVN and in 1964 became a member of the reorganized Antifa Committee . Baum died in Potsdam at the age of 61.

Awards and honors

tomb

Baum's urn was buried in the Socialist Memorial at the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery in Berlin-Lichtenberg .

Numerous streets and schools in the GDR were named after him, some of which still exist today. For example, in 1979 the northern part of Marzahner Chaussee in Berlin-Marzahn was renamed Bruno-Baum-Straße.

Criticism of Baum's publication "Resistance in Auschwitz" and aftermath

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The three different versions of his book Resistance in Auschwitz between 1949 and 1962 reflect in a small space, regardless of the peculiarities of Baum's person, how the Cold War changed the memory of the extermination camp in the official rhetoric by omitting and adding names. It also shows how a theoretical narrowing of National Socialism, solely as a matter of the monopolies instead of a project of most Germans, falsifies history. "In his endeavor to make the resistance in Auschwitz and Birkenau appear as an 'organization' with uniform interests and under the predominance of the communists, Baum kept silent about a fundamental dilemma."

The former Austrian Auschwitz prisoner Hermann Langbein , who distanced himself from the KPÖ from the mid-1950s , sees Baum's statements in his publication Resistance in Auschwitz as critical. Like Burger, Cyrankiewicz, Raynoch, Soswinski and Dürmayer, Langbein belonged to the Auschwitz combat group . After looking through the three editions of Baum's book, Langbein noticed that some of the prisoners from the camp resistance who were named in the first edition in 1949 were no longer in the 1962 edition. Again, the 1962 edition shows people who did not appear in the 1949 first edition. Langbein attributes this to the fact that the two campaigners in the camp resistance turned away from communism in the post-war period and thereby lost the favor of the SED.

Baum wrote in Resistance in Auschwitz (1962): “It is not an exaggeration when I say that most of the publications about Auschwitz that were circulating around the world at this time came from us. [...] Up until the last day of our stay in Auschwitz, we informed the world public in this way. "

Holocaust deniers use this statement today to question the well-known descriptions of the prison conditions in Auschwitz by calling them “communist propaganda”. In fact, however, they only reveal that Baum wanted to ascribe a leadership role to the communist resistance, as the KPD has been claiming within the working class since the Weimar period. His statement is directed primarily against national-Polish and organized Jewish forms of resistance in the camp. The historically correct weighting is naturally difficult in view of the sources, as these consist almost exclusively of the published memories of those affected.

The means of publication were, in particular, one shortwave transmitter in the warehouse to Krakow and from there to London. Baum speaks here generally of “Polish comrades” as those involved. In terms of content, the “came from us” could refer to the editing of the programs that his group carried out, as he describes in detail. There were probably several other suppliers to the Krakow station. Cyrankiewicz, who kept the connection with the Krakow broadcaster, carried out the execution of Witold Pileckis , the most important person on the radio team, as a "western agent" in 1947/48 .

In the expanded version of Resistance in Auschwitz from 1957/1962 on pages 55ff. there is a section " JA Topf & Sons " in the chapter "The real culprits in the crimes in Auschwitz are the German corporations". Topf was by no means a corporation, but belonged as a single company to two brothers and until 1941 partially owned by Obering. Auditor , it had a few hundred employees. However, the SED- CPSU theory of “ state monopoly capitalism ” of that time required that only corporate bosses could be criminals. Baum does not give a registered office for the Topf company, which was in Erfurt until 1945 . He wore it u. a. also contributed to the fact that the memory of the crimes of the company, whose name was now known worldwide from the oven flap pictures from the crematoria, was not discussed in the GDR and that the company employees from Erfurt who were knowingly and significantly involved in the construction of the gas chambers, of whom quite a few had in the meantime risen to become SED and police cadres on site and were able to devote themselves to their alleged anti-fascism against the war criminals in the FRG.

Publications

  • It's about our children. Berlin 1947.
  • Our plan for the recovery of Berlin. The Berlin two-year plan. Berlin 1948.
  • Creates order in Berlin. The way to normalize the economy. Berlin 1948.
  • Resistance in Auschwitz. Report of the international anti-fascist camp administration. 1st edition: VVN-Verlag, Potsdam 1949 (55 pages; frontispiece: Josef Cyrankiewicz ).
    • Extended new edition, same title: (called 1st edition) Kongress, Berlin 1957 (108 & 4 pages); 2. edit Edition ibid. 1962 (110 p.)
  • The tasks of the party in carrying out the trade union elections and drawing up the VEB plan. Berlin 1952.
  • Peaceful communication secures the job. Berlin 1953.
  • The last days of Mauthausen. Berlin 1965.

literature

Web links

Commons : Bruno Baum  - collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ↑ Peter Przybylski : The importance of the "red suitcase" for the 1989/90 investigations. (No longer available online.) In: bstu.bund.de. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; accessed on January 15, 2020 .
  2. ^ A b Holger Kulick: A matter for the boss: The "red suitcase". (No longer available online.) In: bstu.bund.de. Archived from the original on March 8, 2016 ; accessed on January 15, 2020 .
  3. ^ Henryk Świebocki: The "Kampfgruppe Auschwitz" . In: Wacław Długoborski, Franciszek Piper (ed.): Auschwitz 1940–1945. Studies on the history of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp , Oswiecim 1999, III. Band Resistance , p. 155 f.
  4. ^ Arnulf Baring : The Russians shot in the air: Arnulf Baring on June 17, 1953. In: Der Spiegel . 25/1965, June 16, 1965, pp. 78-88 , accessed January 15, 2020 . Klaus-Dieter Müller, Joachim Scherrieble, Mike Schmeitzner (eds.): June 17, 1953 in the mirror of Soviet intelligence documents: 33 secret reports by the representative of the Interior Ministry of the Soviet Union in ... July 18, 1953 on the events in the GDR , Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2008, p. 37 f.
  5. ^ Konrad Litschko: Luxemburg commemoration: Rosa im Geiste. In: taz.de . January 10, 2011, accessed January 15, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Karin Hartewig. Returned: The History of the Jewish Communists in the GDR. Weimar 2000, p. 465.
  7. ^ A b Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz Frankfurt 1980, p. 22.
  8. ↑ Baum, on the other hand, expressly does not use the term “Kampfgruppe Auschwitz”. The word pair appears in the literature for the first time with Hermann Langbein in his essay of the same name in the anthology from 1962, see dsb. and Hans Günther Adler et al. Ed .: Auschwitz, testimonials and reports . Europ. Verlagsanstalt, most recently 1995, pp. 227–238 ISBN 3-434-46223-6 , previous frequent editions. The name of Bruno Baums, who referred to himself several times as a head of the camp resistance, appears in Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz . Ullstein, Frankfurt 1980 only a few times. With Henryk Świebocki: The "Kampfgruppe Auschwitz". In: Wacław Długoborski, Franciszek Piper (ed.): Auschwitz 1940–1945. Studies on the history of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, Oswiecim 1999, III. Volume Resistance, p. 155, it is pointed out that Baum belonged to the “international leadership” of the “Kampfgruppe Auschwitz” and took over his area of ​​responsibility after Ernst Burger's arrest . Baum probably deleted the term "Kampfgruppe Auschwitz", introduced by Langbein in the Auschwitz concentration camp, as well as Langbein's name from his publications, since Langbein was no longer acceptable in the GDR due to his renunciation of communism.
  9. ↑ Langbein himself and Heinz Brandt , as well as Witold Pilecki , who was executed in 1948 and who was not mentioned by name as early as 1949, but referred to as the "cavalry lieutenant", are not mentioned in Baum's publication. It's clear who he means. Pilecki was one of the most important radio operators from the ZOW in the concentration camp.
  10. ↑ Essentially people who meanwhile had achieved something in the GDR, such as B. Hermann Axen
  11. ↑ Bruno Baum: Resistance in Auschwitz , 1949 p. 32 f. and 1962, p. 87.
  12. ↑ Record in the following libraries: Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum ; Anne Frank Shoah Library Leipzig; German Resistance Memorial Center
  13. ↑ Up to p. 64 the new edition contains a new, general description, in particular about the involvement of industrialists (called “monopolies” etc.) and doctors in the Auschwitz crimes. From p. 65 a chapter “Resistance in Auschwitz” follows, a varied version of the 1949 edition. The subtitle has been omitted. This edition is illustrated with photos from Auschwitz.
personal data
SURNAME Baum, Bruno
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Anders, Fritz (pseudonym); Schwarz, Walter (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German KPD and SED functionary and resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1971
Place of death Potsdam