Ernst Rassek

Ernst Rassek (born December 5, 1909 in Ruda , † August 16, 1956 in Baden-Baden ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Ernst Rassek was born into a German family in Upper Silesia . He served in the Polish army and made his GCSE in a Polish school. He then worked in his father's saddlery and wallpapering business. In the early 1930s he made an extensive tour of Europe on a motorcycle that took him to Algeria . He then wrote for the German-language home newspaper of Kattowitz and reported, among other things, on the Olympic Games of 1936 .

In Berlin he got to know some Jewish families and learned of their restrictions under the Nazi race laws . He began to help the owners of businesses that were being forcibly armed by smuggling foreign currency for Jews who were willing to leave the country and who fled to Poland . He was arrested by denunciation on February 3, 1937 and charged with misconduct against foreign exchange legislation before the Berlin Regional Court . A total of three cases were found in which he helped families. The damage totaled a little more than 8,000 Reichsmarks . He was sentenced to two years and a month in prison and an additional fine of 5,000 Reichsmarks. He served his term in prison in Sonnenburg.

Then Rassek settled in Katowice , where he was co-managing director of a restaurant and a cabaret. There he met his wife Maria. From 1942 the couple ran a children's rest home for bombed-out children in Zakopane . In 1943 Rassek was drafted into the Wehrmacht. Since he was considered a “beneficiary of the Jews” and “economic pest”, he was declared “unworthy of defense” and had to serve in the 999 parole troops. There he was assigned to the Todt Organization and served as an interpreter. As part of this service he was forced to take action against partisans in Croatia and Serbia.

In January 1945 he was given home leave and deserted with his family . The family fled via Dresden to Bavaria to Ravensburg, where they hid for two months until the end of the war. After the end of the Second World War, he was employed by the French occupation as head of the Hotel Terminus in Baden-Baden. From 1952 he also took over the Maxim. Shortly afterwards, he learned of a fatal cancer. Until his death on August 16, 1956, he fought against the then judgment of the regional court in order to be rehabilitated and compensated as a persecuted person by the Nazi regime.

After his death, his son resumed the rehabilitation process from 1979. In October 1980 he was finally recognized as the persecuted.

literature

• Adalbert Metzinger : People in Resistance - Central Baden 1933–1943 (=  special publication of the Rastatt district archive, volume 13 ). regional culture publishing house, Rastatt 2017, ISBN 978-3-89735-978-9 , p. 105-107 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ernst Rassek, Hotel Terminus, Baden-Baden for requisition 1945-1950 in Baden-Baden in the State Archive of Baden-Wuerttemberg