Georg Wrazidlo

Georg Wrazidlo (born June 3, 1917 in Gliwice ; † August 2 or 3, 1959 in Berlin-Charlottenburg ) was a German doctor and a victim of National Socialism and Stalinism .

Life

Georg Wrazidlo was born in what was then Upper Silesia as the son of a machine manufacturer. He had two older sisters and one brother. His father worked as a Catholic labor leader and Wrazidlo was brought up in a Christian way. After attending the Catholic elementary school in Gliwice, from 1930 he attended the humanistic grammar school of Heiligkreuz in Neisse as a boarding school student , which was run by the Steyler missionaries as a mission college with priestly training. In 1937 he received his school leaving certificate and was then called up for the Reich Labor Service , which he had to do in Echem . Immediately afterwards he was called up for the 84th Infantry Regiment in Gleiwitz for the Wehrmacht . As a non-commissioned officer, he took part in the attack on Poland . In May 1940 he was posted to the Döberitz Infantry School . He was then promoted to sergeant and lieutenant in the reserve in October 1940 , before being commanded back to the Eastern Front shortly before the attack on the Soviet Union began. From April 1942 he studied medicine as a member of the 4th student company at the University of Breslau . He was the 1943 and 1944 Vorphysikum the Physikum .

In Breslau, Wrazidlo met former classmates from the mission college who, like himself, were opponents of National Socialism for religious reasons. The group, which was formed under his leadership, tried by various actions to protect its members from being deployed to the front again. After the Gestapo learned of the group's activities, all members and those who knew about it were arrested for " undermining military strength ". On November 4, 1944, Wrazidlo was sent to the Wroclaw Police Prison. He stayed there until January 20, 1945; after that he was sent to the Groß-Rosen concentration camp as a protective prisoner without trial or judgment . He and other members of the group were transferred to Buchenwald Concentration Camp on March 3 . From 20 April, however, he had a company commander of a so-called probation unit at the Bohemian Forest near Passau war attend. There he faced other members of his group of American soldiers five days before the German surrender . They released him from prisoner-of-war after 14 days because of his previous concentration camp imprisonment.

He tried to find his relatives in Gleiwitz. There he learned that his mother and sister had been shot by Soviet soldiers when the Red Army marched into the village in January 1945 . His father had died in the mid-1930s and his brother had been missing since the summer of 1944 , so that only he and his second sister had survived the war. Until his death, he had a good relationship with her in fraternal ties.

From Gleiwitz he went to Breslau, where from July 1945 he worked as an assistant doctor in the surgical department in a hospital run by Steyler missionary sisters. After interrogation by the Polish political police, he left Breslau and continued his medical studies in the 8th semester in Berlin at the University of Berlin from the end of October 1945 . He was living in Reinickendorf at the time .

Because of his experiences in the Nazi dictatorship and because of his Christian-humanistic origins, he joined the Ring of Christian-Democratic Students and the Junge Union immediately after his arrival in Berlin . He was a co-founder of the non-partisan “Student Working Group” with members of all parties approved at the time, which was recognized by the Soviet Military Administration (SMAD) as a provisional student body. In this he was appointed head of the university and in this function, when the university reopened on January 26, 1946, made the "pledge of the students", which said

“Years of great suffering and guilt from our people are behind us. Now at last we can rise up in real freedom to do scientific work for the benefit and blessing of our people and humanity. We students who are allowed to study in this time of need will strive with all our might to ensure that science is never again degraded to a tool of political criminals. The future will be our future. We want to help shape it and want to become solid pillars of the new democratic Germany. "

- The students' vow on the day the University of Berlin reopened on January 26, 1946; presented by Georg Wrazidlo

The wishes and hopes presented there did not come true for many. In the period that followed, the one-sided communist ideologization increased more and more. Together with about thirty other members of the student working group and some other students who were verifiably all victims of fascism or active "anti-fascists", he protested on May 5, 1946 against the raising of flags and banners of the SED in the university. The protest declaration stated that the university should serve science and education and was not a party organization. Wrazidlo was then immediately removed from the chair of the student working group. As a representative of the medical faculty in this, he continued to advocate for fellow students who did not quite conform to the system and also continued to issue critical statements on the increasing Sovietization in university life. The SMAD continued to watch him and wanted to turn him off. In particular, his close contact with a group around the American university officer was viewed with suspicion.

On March 13, 1947, Georg Wrazidlo, after taking part in an all-German meeting of the RCDS in Marburg as a representative of the Berlin university group from March 7 to 10, was lured by a spy to Café Kranzler Unter den Linden in the Soviet sector of Berlin and there arrested by the German police. After 14 days of interrogation he was handed over to the central NKVD office in Potsdam and from there taken to the NKVD special camp No. 3 in Hohenschönhausen . Despite the strictest interrogations, he did not reveal any names of helpers.

On December 12, 1948, Georg Wrazidlo was sentenced to 25 years of forced labor by the Soviet military tribunal for alleged espionage and anti-Soviet efforts . He was then imprisoned in Bautzen prison , which at that time was still under Soviet supervision. After a prisoner uprising in Bautzen on March 31, during which he had provided medical assistance, he was transferred to the Brandenburg Görden prison in July 1950 . There he worked, as before in Bautzen, as an assistant doctor in the surgical department and later in the internal department of the prison hospital. He was later certified that through his self-sacrificing activity, often over 14 hours a day, many prisoners owed him their health and their lives. His Christian beliefs and his medical practice helped him to endure and survive the difficult prison time.

On October 15, 1956, he was released from prison on the basis of a “pardon” from President Wilhelm Pieck on parole with a two-year probation period. After almost ten years in prison, he went to West Berlin, where he continued his medical studies at the Free University of Berlin , which he completed in 1958 with the state examination. He completed his compulsory time as an assistant doctor at the church St. Hildegard Hospital in Charlottenburg , which was then headed by Steyler missionary sisters.

On March 28, 1958, he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st Class, for his services during his time as an assistant doctor in prison .

In the night of August 2nd to 3rd, he died in a traffic accident in Berlin-Charlottenburg. The exact circumstances of this accident could never be clarified.

Georg Wrazidlo was rehabilitated by the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation on September 30, 1994, regardless of his sister's application for rehabilitation in 1995 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m} Waltraud Rehfeld: Georg Wrazidlo In: Karl Wilhelm Fricke (Hrsg.): Opposition and resistance in the GDR. CH Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-47619-8 , pp. 166-172.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Jasmin Grunert, Sarah Stolz, Madeleine Bauschke: founding students . In: Jessica Hoffmann, Helena Seidel, Nils Baratella : History of the Free University of Berlin: Events - Places - People. Frank & Timme, 2008, ISBN 978-3-86596-205-8 , pp. 143-145.