Elli Domke

Elli Domke

Elli Emma Franziska Domke b. Dehneke ( June 1, 1888 in Magdeburg-Neustadt - March 10, 1975 in Gronau ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism . The first name is sometimes also written Elly .

Life

Domke had a son from his first marriage, Walter Dittmann, and a daughter, Margarete (born in Berlin in 1907, later Grete Kusber ) together with her future husband, Carl Brillereich-Domke . In 1922 the family moved to Gronau and then lived at Piepenpohlstrasse 22. Elli Domke was a member of the KPD and the Red Aid and also of the “Union of Soviet Friends”. Together with her son she visited the Soviet Union as a passenger at the Circus Barum in 1931 for about 1 ¾ years . Then they came back to Gronau.

Elli's husband was also politically active, in 1932 he became head of the Red Front Fighter League (RFB) in Gronau. From March 1933 to December 1933 he was held in the police prisons in Gronau, Münster and in a concentration camp on the grounds of the Brauweiler Abbey and in the Papenburg concentration camp. Elli and Carl Domke and their daughter Grete Kusber brought eight to ten refugees from Wuppertal near Overdinkel across the border to Holland . They risked their own lives and that of their family members. After their daughter Grete went into exile in the Netherlands on July 7, 1936, the couple took on responsibility for the illegal distribution of literature from Holland to Germany for the KPD. The couple were eventually betrayed by a neighbor who lived in house number 18 on the same street. On August 17, 1936, two Gestapo people disguised themselves as political refugees and asked the Domke family for help. They were admitted, given food and clothes. The couple also organized the escape to the Netherlands. Comrade Bernhard Klynsma was commissioned to bring the allegedly persecuted across the German-Dutch border at night. There the trap snapped shut, Klynsma was arrested and the entire street where the Domkes lived was cordoned off. The Gestapo immediately arrested the entire family.

The small children of the family were taken in by a woman from Gronau. Elli Domke, her son Walter Dittmann and Bernhard Klynsma were transferred to the judicial prison in Hamm . They were charged with high treason and convicted on March 16, 1937 by the Hamm Higher Regional Court for “preparing a treasonous enterprise”. Walter Dittmann received a prison sentence of three years and six months. He was a member of the SS but was punished for failing to report his parents and sister to the Gestapo. His mother was sentenced to four years in prison for high treason. Elli Domke and Bernhard Klynsma were taken to a concentration camp.

Social Committee 1950

Elli Domke was politically active again after her concentration camp imprisonment. Together with her husband, she worked for the KPD in 1948 on the social committee of the city of Gronau. At the same time she was unionized.

Commemoration

On April 29, 2015, three stumbling blocks were laid in honor of Elli Domke, her husband and daughter Margarethe Kusber at Piepenpohlstraße 22 in Gronau . The move was initiated by Şahin Aydın, then a councilor in Bottrop and chairman of the German-Kurdish circle of friends. Mayor Sonja Jürgens welcomed the relatives of the three winners: “Today we bow to Elli and Carl Domke and Margarethe Kusber. It is important and I am proud to have had such courageous citizens in our city. "

literature

• Sahin Aydin: One family - a struggle for humanity, against fascism and war. Political biographies. Publisher: KDFK e. V., Gronau / Westphalia 2015

Individual evidence

1. ^ Frank Zimmermann: Stumbling blocks for Carl u. Elli Domke and Grete Kusber relocated . In: Westfälische Nachrichten of April 14, 2015
2. ↑ YouTube : Gronau: April 29, 2015, Stolpersteine, Grete Kusber, Carl Domke, Elli Domke, Resistance , accessed on January 7, 2016
3. ↑ Kommunisten.de: Stumbling stone laying for three resistance fighters from Gronau , accessed on January 7, 2016