Elli Smula

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The stumbling block for Elli Smula at Singerstraße 1 in Berlin

Elli Smula (born on 10. October 1914 in Berlin; died on 8. July 1943 in Ravensbruck ) was a streetcar that was probably due to participation in drinking bouts, which are said to have come to homosexual acts, displayed and in the Ravensbruck concentration camp under died in unexplained circumstances. Biographical research on homosexuality during the Nazi era has documented her fate since the 1990s. A stumbling block in Berlin has been remembering her since November 2015 .

Life

Elli Smula was the illegitimate daughter of the domestic servant Martha Smula. She had a brother three years her senior. The father of the two children died as a soldier during the First World War . Elli Smula had no professional training and was a worker. On July 23, 1940, she was assigned to work as a tram conductor for the Berliner Verkehrsgesellschaft (BVG) in the tram depot on Elsenstrasse. In September 1940 she was arrested by the Gestapo at her workplace . It was several times in the headquarters of the Gestapo prison at Alexanderplatz interrogated before entering the women on 30 November 1940 Ravensbruck concentration camp deported was.

Nothing is known about the reason for her arrest, but it is probably connected with the arrest of her colleague Margarete Rosenberg . The employer of the two, the BVG, had reported Rosenberg because she had taken part in carousing bouts in which homosexual acts had occurred. As a result, she was "absent from work within a month for 16 days", which seriously jeopardized the operation of the BVG. In a note from Gestapo IV B 1 c dated September 26, 1940, one can read about Rosenberg and other colleagues: “The BVG complained that some tram conductors were employed at the tram station in Treptow, who were busy with comrades from their company entertained in a lesbian way. It has been alleged that they take female workmates into the apartment, put them under alcohol and then have same sex with them. The next day the women were not able to do their job. This seriously endangered the operation of the Treptow tram station. "

In the access files of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, Smula's reason for detention was noted as “political”, and “lesbian” was noted in a further column. As in the case of Smula's colleague Rosenberg, the real reason for protective custody was probably the “refusal to work” that the Gestapo saw in the frequent absence from work. The accusation that Rosenberg was made of was a breach of duty. A serious accusation, especially in the case of an important war company like the BVG, which transported tens of thousands of workers to the armaments factories every day. For example, the ordinance on the “protection of the armed forces” of November 30, 1939 threatened those with a penitentiary who “disrupts or endangers the orderly work of a company that is important for the defense of the Reich or the supply of the population” by doing something serving the company “except Activity sets ”. And if there was a “breach of employment contract” there was a risk not only of imprisonment, but also of being instructed in a concentration camp by the Gestapo, because according to an order dated July 1, 1939, one could “not stay away from work in breach of duty, refuse to work or maliciously withhold work”. In contrast, homosexual acts played no role in the imprisonment of Smula and Rosenberg in the concentration camps. Unlike male homosexuals, lesbians were not convicted under Section 175 , so lesbian acts and lifestyles were therefore not punishable.

A message to her mother reveals that Elli Smula probably died on July 8, 1943 in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. The circumstances of her death are not known. Probably death from starvation or an illness caused by the circumstances in the concentration camp. The Nazi survivor Martha van Och-Soboll (1910–2001), who was also in Ravensbrück, testified after the war that Elli Smula had already been killed with an injection in 1942 by the camp doctor Herta Oberheuser .

Commemoration

Since November 2015, a stumbling block near Singerstraße 1 in Berlin-Mitte has been remembering Elli Smula.

literature

  • Claudia Schoppmann : The time of masking. Life stories of lesbian women in the “Third Reich” , Orlanda Frauenverlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 978-3-922166-94-8 (1998 as a Fischer paperback), on Elli Smula p. 11ff.
    • Days of Masquerade. Life Stories of Lesbians during the Third Reich. Translated by Allison Brown, Columbia University Press, New York 1996, ISBN 978-0-231-10220-9 . Review
  • Claudia Schoppmann: Forced to Live a Double Life - Avoidance and Survival Strategy of Lesbian Women in the 'Third Reich' . In: Federal Foundation Magnus Hirschfeld (Hrsg.): Research in Queer Format. Current contributions from LGBTI *, queer and gender research . Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-8376-2702-2 , via Elli Smula p. 41, some of which can be viewed on Google Books

Web links

Commons : Elli Smula  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Claudia Schoppmann: Forced to Live a Double Life - Avoidance and Survival Strategy of Lesbian Women in the 'Third Reich' . In: Federal Foundation Magnus Hirschfeld (Hrsg.): Research in Queer Format. Current articles on LGBTI *, queer and gender research , Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-8376-2702-2 , on Elli Smula p. 41
  2. ↑ Biography on rosa-winkel.de , accessed on April 4, 2017
  3. ↑ Rosenberg's biography at rosa-winkel.de , accessed on April 4, 2017
  4. ^ A b Claudia Schoppmann: Elli Smula. In: stolpersteine-berlin.de .
  5. ↑ Smula's biography on rosa-winkel.de , accessed on April 4, 2017
  6. ↑ Smula's biography on rosa-winkel.de , accessed on April 4, 2017
  7. ↑ Rosenberg's biography at rosa-winkel.de , accessed on April 4, 2017
  8. ↑ Information on paragraph 175 on rosa-winkel.de , accessed on April 7, 2017
  9. ↑ Alexander Zinn: Was there persecution of lesbians by the Nazi regime? , accessed August 26, 2018
  10. ^ Maria Fiedler: Stumbling block for lesbian BVG conductors - death in the concentration camp. In: Der Tagesspiegel , November 16, 2015.
  11. ^ Relocation of the stumbling stone in memory of Elli Smula. In: Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft e. V.
  12. ^ Jean Noble: Critique in: The Oral History Review , Volume 24, No. 2 (Winter 1997), pp. 147-149; Retrieved December 18, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Smula, Elli
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German tram conductor and Nazi victim
DATE OF BIRTH October 10, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH July 8, 1943
Place of death Ravensbrück