Ernst Burger (resistance fighter)

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Ernst Burger (born May 16, 1915 in Vienna ; † December 30, 1944 in Auschwitz ) was an Austrian communist, resistance fighter against National Socialism and was a leading member of the conspiratorial camp resistance in Auschwitz.

Life

Burger, a clerk by trade (commercial clerk), grew up in a working-class family in Vienna-Hietzing. In 1926 he became a member of the Rote Falken , whose district group he headed from 1933 until the ban in February 1934. After the February fights in 1934 he became a member of the illegal Communist Youth Association (KJV), to whose leadership he was elected in 1935. In June 1934, January 1935 and May 1937 Burger was sentenced by the police to several weeks or months of arrest and in September 1937 the Korneuburg District Court sentenced him to two months of heavy imprisonment. From August 1937 to February 1938 he was interned in the Wöllersdorf detention center . From May 1935 to July 1936 he graduated from the International Lenin School in Moscow.

After the "Anschluss" of Austria to Nazi German Reich in March 1938, emigrated Burger in May 1938 in the Switzerland and from there to Paris . He returned illegally to Austria in November 1938 to organize party work and was arrested by the Gestapo two days later . In December 1940, he was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison by the Vienna Higher Regional Court for preparation for high treason . He was then sent to Stein prison .

After he was arrested, Burger was not released, but transferred by the Gestapo to the main camp of Auschwitz , where he arrived on December 6, 1941 and was given the prisoner number 23,850. Burger was as block clerk of the block 4 function prisoner . A Belgian-Jewish deportee, Jozef Blitz (n. 66200), testified after the war that Burger in Block 4 had saved his life.

He initially belonged to the Austrian resistance group in the main camp that was formed in 1942. Other members of the resistance group were Alfred Klahr , Hermann Langbein , Rudolf Friemel , Ludwig Vesely and later Heinrich Dürmayer and Ludwig Soswinski . At the beginning of May 1943, the Auschwitz combat group emerged from the Austrian resistance group and the Polish camp resistance . In addition to Langbein and two Polish prisoners, Burger was a member of the four-man international leadership of the combat group.

Together with Raynoch and three other Polish prisoners from the "Kampfgruppe Auschwitz", an escape from the main camp was organized and carried out on October 27, 1944. Two SS men had been bribed to ensure the escape of these prisoners in truck-loaded boxes to a partisan base near the camp. From outside, together with the Polish partisans, effective cooperation in the resistance should be organized and ensured. However, the escape was betrayed by one of the two SS men. Burger and the four other inmates were taken to the Political Department for interrogation, detained and ill-treated. Before that, the denounced prisoners tried to poison themselves, from which two Polish prisoners died. Burger and two other inmates survived the attempted suicide because their stomachs were pumped out. Together with the two Polish prisoners as well as Friemel and Vesely, who the two SS men had won over as escape helpers, Burger was hanged on December 30, 1944 on the roll call area of the main camp in front of the 15,000 prisoners who stood there. Immediately before the hanging, the execution candidates were beaten by SS men for shouting anti-fascist slogans.

Since December 1949 a plaque commemorates Ernst Burger on his former home in Vienna 14, Matznergasse 18. The City of Vienna also honored the memory of Ernst Burger in November 1963 with Ernst-Burger-Gasse in Vienna's 14th district .

literature

  • Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz. Ullstein-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1980, ISBN 3-548-33014-2 .
  • Manfred Mugrauer: Ernst Burger (1915-1944). Functional of the Communist Youth Association and leading member of the "Kampfgruppe Auschwitz". In: Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance (ed.): Feindbilder. Yearbook 2015. Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-901142-65-9 , pp. 191–228.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst Burger (1915–1944) (website of the Alfred Klahr Society, accessed December 20, 2014)
  2. ^ A b 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. Tape resistance. P. 154.
  3. ↑ Jozef Blitz, dossier folder number. 9126323, Yad Vashem Archives. Video testimonial made by "Les Compagnons de la Mémoire" from Brussels on January 5th 2007.
  4. ^ 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. Tape resistance. P. 155.
  5. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz. 1980, p. 290 f.
  6. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz. 1980, p. 304 ff.
  7. ↑ In memory of an Austrian freedom fighter In: Rathauskorrespondenz from November 30, 1963. (Retrieved July 18, 2012)
personal data
SURNAME Burger, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian resistance fighter, communist and concentration camp prisoner
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH December 30, 1944
Place of death Auschwitz concentration camp