Gerhard Zadek

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Gerhard Zadek (born November 2, 1919 in Berlin ; † October 5, 2005 in Berlin ) was a resistance fighter against National Socialism and a journalist.

Gerhard Zadek was the last surviving member of Herbert Baum's resistance group . Since 1933 this had tried in the Reich capital Berlin to organize the fight against National Socialism with political actions.

Zadek completed an apprenticeship as a toolmaker. During his youth he belonged to the Zionist youth organization Hashomer Hatzair . There and in the group of his friend Baum he got to know the rejection and the fight against fascism . In 1939 he began training for the Hachschara at the "Gut Winkel" agricultural school in Spreenhagen (Mark). In August 1939 he emigrated to England with his wife Alice . During his exile he studied mechanical engineering. He was a founding member of the FDJ in Great Britain, in 1943 he became a member of the KJVD and the KPD .

In 1947 he returned to Germany. There he later learned that his parents were shot in the Jungfernhof concentration camp near Riga in 1943 . From the beginning he was integrated into the political system of the Soviet occupation zone and later the GDR . He started as an employee at the Neues Leben publishing house and soon after took over the management of the magazine Junge Generation , a magazine for FDJ functionaries. After the founding of the GDR in October 1949, Albert Norden appointed him deputy of the GDR's information office. In 1952 he became deputy editor-in-chief of the SED newspapers in Mecklenburg . After he had lost his functions and offices in the context of the Stalinist purges in 1953 because of "emigration to the west", he studied patent engineering and became director of the VEB Schwermaschinenbau "7. October “ in Berlin. He later became an employee of the GDR Patent Office and a member of the Chamber of Technology .

After the couple had a special position in the political system of the GDR as members of the Jewish community in East Berlin, they began to write their lives down after reunification . In both books they describe their life between Judaism and socialism, which led to the filming of their life in the film Shalom Comrades by Gitta Nickel in 1996 . The Nuremberg artist and local politician Ruth Zadek is one of three daughters.

Works

  • Alice and Gerhard Zadek: With the last train to England. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-320-01784-5 .
  • Alice and Gerhard Zadek: You are probably meschugge. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-320-01962-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ : You were young, Jewish and left TAZ March 3, 2010
personal data
SURNAME Zadek, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Jewish resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH November 2, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 5, 2005
Place of death Berlin