Ernst Busse

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Ernst Busse (born November 24, 1897 in Solingen ; † November 11, 1952 in the Vorkuta camp ) was a German politician ( KPD / SED ). He was a member of the Reichstag and Minister of the Interior of Thuringia .

Life

Busse grew up in the poor circumstances of a family of knife and scissor grinders in Solingen. He became politically active at an early age, first with the Socialist Workers 'Youth (SAJ), then also with the German Metal Workers' Association (DMV). His pulmonary tuberculosis , a typical occupational disease of the Solingen grinders, prevented him from participating in the First World War . Busse was therefore employed as a harvest worker.

He joined the KPD as soon as it was founded, became a member of the district leadership and wrote as a workers correspondent and volunteer for the Bergische Arbeiterimme . At the same time he took over functions in the DMV.

Since 1925 Busse was a full-time trade union official in Mönchengladbach and from 1931 in Cologne district leader of the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO). As a politician of the KPD, he was a city councilor in Viersen and was elected to the Reichstag in 1932 .

After the National Socialists came to power , Busse illegally continued his political and trade union activities as RGO district manager in Erfurt . Busse was later arrested. On November 12, 1934, Busse was sentenced to three years in prison for "preparing high treason" (he had distributed leaflets) and "forming new parties" . After serving his imprisonment in Kassel and Cologne, he was sent to the Lichtenburg concentration camp and, after its dissolution in 1937, to the Buchenwald concentration camp . He was from the beginning as a prisoner functionary used first as a block leader. Busse became camp elder II in 1939 and camp elder I. From 1942 on, Busse Kapo was in the prisoner infirmary. He was one of the most important heads of the illegal camp committee. In Buchenwald, the communist prisoners managed to retain almost all functional positions, thus bringing the internal administration of the concentration camp into their own hands. However, they had no real power over the SS and could only do relatively little for the well-being of their comrades and the other prisoners, at the cost of working with the SS.

After the end of the SS rule in Buchenwald in April 1945, the US military authorities appointed Busse as head of the state labor office in Erfurt. After the Americans evacuated Thuringia and the Soviet troops occupied the country, he became the Thuringian Minister of the Interior and Deputy Prime Minister on July 16, 1945. He kept this position after Thuringia became part of the Soviet occupation zone .

As early as October 1946, the SED conducted an initial investigation into Busse - he had been denounced by former inmates who felt that he had treated them badly. Similar party proceedings were repeated, and Busse was accused of working too closely with the SS and not doing enough to rescue the Soviet prisoners of war in Buchenwald. Busse probably got caught in a power struggle between the former KPD members who emigrated to the Soviet Union and those who had stayed in Germany. In any case, the interrogation records show that the investigators made no attempt to understand the predicament of the “red kapos”.

In the next period, Busse was assigned less and less important tasks. In May 1947 he resigned as a minister and was appointed as the fourth vice-president of the German administration for agriculture and forestry, as head of the office for land reform and from August 1948 as a supervisory board of the Association of German Consumer Cooperatives.

On April 18, 1950, he was invited to a meeting with Soviet authorities in Karlshorst , from which he never returned. On February 27, 1951, he was sentenced to life imprisonment as an alleged war criminal by the military tribunal of the garrison of the Soviet sector of the city of Berlin. He died in special camp No. 6 RetschLag (river camp) in Vorkuta, in the autonomous republic of Komi .

On March 31, 1990 he was rehabilitated by the Central Arbitration Commission of the PDS . It was established that Busses persecution was an expression of Stalinist arbitrariness. There was no rehabilitation from the Soviet side.

literature

Web links

  • Ernst Busse in the database of members of the Reichstag
  • Wolf among wolves. In: MDR . Retrieved on January 26, 2018 (explanation of the situation and the conflicts as a prisoner functionary and Kapo using the example of Ernst Busse.).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Harry Stein, Buchenwald Memorial (ed.): Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945 , volume accompanying the permanent historical exhibition, Göttingen 1999, p. 296
personal data
SURNAME Repentance, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD), MdR, head of the International Prisoner Committee in Buchenwald concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Solingen
DATE OF DEATH November 11, 1952
Place of death Vorkuta warehouse