Community for Peace and Construction

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The Community for Peace and construction was still relatively unknown remaining resistance group in the era of National Socialism . It was founded by the judicial clerk Hans Winkler and the Jewish electrician Werner Scharff in Luckenwalde .

history

Berlin memorial plaque on the house, Menzelstrasse 9, in Berlin-Grunewald

Winkler was originally a politically uninterested clerk at the district court in Luckenwalde, who, as a witness to interrogations and torture, and because of his friendship with the Jewish couple Else and Günther Samuel, became an opponent of Nazism and, together with his wife Frieda, committed himself to protecting persecuted Jews and opponents of the regime prescribed. He founded the Samuels and other friends under the code name " savings club high use" an organization whose purpose was to raise money, food and food brands in hiding and hidden from August 1943, the then sixteen-year-old Eugene Herman peace in his own Two room apartment. Samuel, who could not avoid being deported to Theresienstadt with his family , made the acquaintance of Werner Scharff there and passed on Winkler's address to him.

Before his deportation, Scharff, who had worked as an electrician for the Jewish community at the Levetzowstrasse synagogue , which had been converted into a collective camp , had gained access to the deportation lists thanks to good contacts with Gestapo officials, and during this time numerous friends and acquaintances had been given timely warnings of the impending one He was arrested and made contact with supporters in Berlin who enabled him and his friend Fancia Grün to go into hiding and to survive illegally for a few months until they were arrested and deported in early August 1943. After Scharff fled Theresienstadt again with Fancia Grün on September 7, 1943 and was able to hide in Fürstenwalde after returning to Berlin, he contacted Winkler in Luckenwalde and together with him founded the Community for Peace and Reconstruction.

The group of around thirty was organized on a decentralized basis and produced leaflets with a total circulation of around 3500. In the leaflets that were distributed as chain letters, she called on the population to think for themselves, to resist and to end the war:

“The Community for Peace and Construction is marching. Courageous men and women in Germany have come together to put an end to lies and murder by the Nazis. [...] We fight for immediate peace. [...] We call for passive resistance. We ask nothing else of you than that you should think. Fascism has meanwhile been hit that the only thing left to do is to save what can be saved, namely to surrender unconditionally immediately. We therefore urge you, German soldiers, to lay down your arms and rise up against your oppressors. We call on the German people to actively resist. "

The group was socially and politically heterogeneous and was made up of friends and acquaintances of the two. There were contacts with the resistance group of Luckenwalder POW camp Stalag III-A .

After a member of the group, Hilde Bromberg , as a result of a denunciation by the wife of the publisher and bookseller August Bonneß jr. , Who was sentenced to death by the “ People's Court ” . (1890–1944) was arrested in April 1944, the Gestapo tracked down the group. In October 1944 the members were arrested in Luckenwalde and Berlin, in October and December most of the others were arrested. The non-Jewish members were indicted before the People's Court of high treason and treason and for undermining military strength, but the trial scheduled for April 23, 1945 did not take place. The Jewish members were sent to concentration camps, Fancia Grün , her former husband Gerhard Grün and Werner Scharff were shot in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp without trial . Winkler and most of the other members were able to survive because of the liberation by the Red Army .

literature

  • Community for Peace and Construction. In: Wolfgang Benz, Walter Pehle (Ed.): Lexicon of German Resistance. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2001, ISBN 3-596-15083-3 , pp. 213-215.
  • Eugen Herman-Friede : No time for jumping for joy. Memories of illegality and rebellion 1942-1948. With an afterword by Barbara Schieb-Samizdeh. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 1991 (= series "Documents, Texts, Materials", Volume 2), ISBN 3-926893-11-7 .
  • Eugen Herman-Friede: Work and resources of the “Community for Peace and Construction”. In: Detlev J. Blesgen (Hrsg.): Financiers, finances and forms of financing of resistance. Lit, Berlin / Münster 2006 (= series of publications by the Research Association July 20, 1944 eV, Volume 5), ISBN 3-8258-7662-4 , pp. 189–191.
  • Arno Lustiger : To the struggle to the life and death. The book on the resistance of the Jews in Europe, 1933-1945. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1994; Licensed edition for area Verlag, Erftstadt 2005, ISBN 3-89996-269-9 , pp. 66–69 ("Werner Scharff and the community for peace and construction.")
  • Hermann Maas, Gustav Radbruch (ed.): The Unforgotten. Victims of madness 1933 to 1945, Heidelberg 1952.
  • Barbara Schieb-Samizadeh: The community for peace and construction. A little known resistance group. In: Dachauer Hefte , 7, 1991, pp. 174–190.
  • Barbara Schieb: An era is coming to an end. On the death of the last two participants in the resistance group “Community for Peace and Construction” . In: information. Scientific journal of the German Resistance Study Group 1933–1945 , Issue 89, 2019

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eugen Herman-Friede : Work and resources of the "Community for Peace and Construction." In: Detlev J. Blesgen (Ed.): Financiers, finances and financing forms of resistance . Lit, Berlin / Münster 2006 (= series of publications by the Research Association July 20, 1944 eV, Vol. 5), p. 189 ff., P. 190