Emil Meier

Emil Meier (born August 31, 1909 in Munich ; † 1990 there ) was a German communist who was imprisoned several times in the Dachau concentration camp during the National Socialist era .

Life

Emil Meier came from a proletarian family with many children and grew up in the Giesing district of Munich . His father, a trained hairdresser , could not find a job in the 1920s and hired himself out as a casual worker . Emil Meier graduated from elementary school and began training as a furniture polisher . At the age of 14 he joined the socialist youth workers. In 1926 he switched to the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) , for which he worked as an election campaign helper. In the same year he rebuilt the district group Obergiesing of the KJVD. Soon afterwards he was given the management of the organization. In 1929 he became a member of the Red Front Fighters League (RFB), the paramilitary division of the Communist Party of Germany . Because of his commitment to the RFB, he was detained for eight weeks in the same year and lost his job. At the time of seizure of power by the Nazis in Bavaria in March 1933 Meier was one of the leaders of the Communist Party in Munich and was admitted as one of the first political prisoners in the newly erected Dachau concentration camp, where he had to stay more than two years.

After his release, he was unemployed for most of the time before he was arrested again in 1937 and sent to Dachau concentration camp for three months. Even after the attack in the Bürgerbräukeller in November 1939, Meier was in protective custody for four weeks . On April 7, 1945, he was arrested by the Gestapo on charges of producing and distributing leaflets critical of the regime, tortured in the basement of the Wittelsbacher Palais and then transferred to the Munich correctional facility . Only the end of World War II saved him from execution.

literature

• Martin Broszat (editor), Elke Fröhlich : Bavaria in the Nazi era. The challenge of the individual. Stories of Resistance and Persecution. Volume VI.