Fritz Pröll

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Fritz Pröll (born April 23, 1915 in Augsburg ; † November 22, 1944 in Mittelbau-Dora Nordhausen / Harz concentration camp ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

In 1934, the trained metalworker Pröll joined Augsburg's largest resistance group, the “ Red Aid ”. In Augsburg, the “Rote Hilfe” raised funds for families of those persecuted by the Nazi regime. When he handed over five Reichsmarks , Pröll was arrested along with other group members. He received the highest juvenile sentence of the time for “preparation for high treason”: three years in solitary confinement. Fritz Pröll served his sentence from 1934 to 1937 in Landsberg am Lech prison .

Then he was released for a day. “The family was very happy that they could hug Fritz again.” The next day he was arrested again by the Augsburg Gestapo and sent to the Dachau concentration camp without a judgment . As a "repeat offender" he was immediately transferred to the local punishment company. Fritz Pröll was transferred from Dachau concentration camp to Buchenwald concentration camp in 1939 . There he met his brother Josef Pröll. Both became members of the local international resistance group. Fritz and Josef Pröll were transferred to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in France in 1942, along with around 400 other prisoners . They were out in cattle wagons for about three days. The transport is marked as "night and fog transport" in the documents. The two had the stamp "RU" ( return undesirable ) on their papers . The German prisoners had the task of building the Natzweiler concentration camp. The SS plan was to then kill all of the inmates. This was thwarted by a cleverly executed action by the Resistance - all prisoners were initially saved. Fritz Pröll fell in love with a Jewish girl in the Natzweiler concentration camp. The two met several times - the love remained "platonic" according to the circumstances. At that time, Josef Kramer from Augsburg was camp commandant in the Natzweiler concentration camp. The pathological institute in Strasbourg needed human skeletons for its research work and further training opportunities for doctors. Young women from the Natzweiler concentration camp were therefore murdered. The 28-year-old woman with whom Fritz Pröll fell in love was also killed. On December 14, 1943, Fritz and Josef Pröll were transferred back to the Buchenwald concentration camp. While Josef Pröll stayed in Buchenwald concentration camp, Fritz Pröll was transferred to the Dora labor camp, which at that time was still a satellite camp of Buchenwald concentration camp . Thousands of prisoners from many European nations toiled in subterranean tunnels under inhumane working and living conditions to produce Hitler's " retribution weapons ", the V1 and V2 .

Fritz Pröll worked there as a clerk in the infirmary. Because of his good language skills, all important information about the international resistance group came together with him. There Pröll also met the resistanceists Albert Kuntz , Georg Thomas , Ludwig Szymczak , Otto Runki , Christian Behan , Heinz Schneider, the social democrat August Kroneberg , the Czechoslovak doctor and communist Jan Cespiva, the Soviet pilot Jelowoj from Odessa, who was under the false name Simeon Grinko was in Dora, as well as Polish, French and Dutch resistance fighters.

By sabotage, the prisoners of the camp resistance succeeded in rendering some of the missiles inoperable. A third of the rockets fired in 1944 failed. Of the total of 10,800 V2 rockets deployed, more than half exploded while approaching in the air. The oberscharführer Ernst Sander and Colonel Eichhorn were specifically used for the suspected sabotage group be nailed down. The camp was covered with a spy system. When, on November 18, 1944, the Wehrmacht sent back two whole freight trains with V-missiles (“unusable, sabotage”), dozens of suspected prisoners were tortured and hanged. Ropes with nooses were attached to beams between two cranes, several people were hung from them at the same time and strangled by pulling the cranes up. Fritz Pröll dealt with medicine during his long imprisonment, so he was able to help save the lives of many prisoners in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. In order not to betray the members of the camp resistance under torture, Pröll finally committed suicide on November 22, 1944 with lethal injection. Pröll was 29 years old, of which he spent nine and a half years in prison, dungeons and concentration camps.

Fritz Pröll writes in his farewell letter:

"My dear! At the beginning of my hardest hour, receive my brotherly and sisterly greeting. Quiet and content, free from any fear of death, I have made up my mind to die. My last wish: look after the grave of my unforgettable mother and be all hugged and kissed a thousand times; I was loyal and brave to the point of death. Farewell! Centa, Maria, Erika and Liselotte and Rudi. Your Fritz "

literature

  • Gernot Römer: For the forgotten. External concentration camp in Swabia. Swabians in concentration camps. Presse-Dr., Augsburg 1984.

Movie

Anna, I'm afraid for you from Josef Pröll (junior) and Wolfgang Kucera about Anna Pröll , Fritz Pröll's sister-in-law, forward and not forgotten - film about the Augsburg resistance - BRD / 1985

aftermath

A school class at the Paul-Klee Gymnasium in Gersthofen worked on a project in 2001. a. on the life of the Pröll family. She ran into unforeseen difficulties. The mayor denied the students access to the archive and access had to be fought in court.

A renaming of Wernher-von-Braun -Strasse in Gersthofen to Fritz-Pröll-Strasse called for by the SPD Gersthofen (by the City Councilor Peter Schönfelder) has not yet taken place. The city of Gersthofen justified this with the previous practice of naming streets in a district according to themes. To compensate, streets in a new district are to be named after resistance fighters - but this has not happened to this day (as of April 2020).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ From an interview in 1980 with Josef Pröll (brother of Fritz Pröll)
  2. ↑ Source of the original document in the family's private archive
  3. ↑ Tape interview Josef Pröll 1986 + film recordings of the interview 1978
  4. ↑ Documentary Forward and Don't Forget. FRG 1976
  5. ↑ Source - Documentation Center KZ-Natzweiler and tape or film interview Josef Pröll 1976
  6. ↑ Source international red cross - Arolsen
  7. ↑ "Anna, I'm afraid for you"
personal data
SURNAME Pröll, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German member of the Red Aid, concentration camp prisoner in Dora-Mittelbau
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH augsburg
DATE OF DEATH November 22, 1944
Place of death Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp