Hans Alexander (Reichsbanner)

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Hans Alexander (born February 16, 1890 in Breslau ; † September 2, 1933 in Esterwegen concentration camp ) was a German political activist. He was the first person to perish as a prisoner in an Emsland camp .

Life and activity

Alexander came from a Jewish family. From 1914 he took part in the First World War with the Prussian Army , in which he was seriously wounded in 1918 as a deputy sergeant. During the war he was awarded the Iron Cross of Both Classes and the Military Merit Cross.

After the war, Alexander was active in the SPD and in the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold organization for the protection of the republic . In the latter, he finally moved up to a leading position in the Silesian section of the Reichsbanner: In literature he is referred to as managing director of the Reichsbanner in Breslau and as the local chairman of the Reichsbanner there.

In the course of the mass arrests of political opponents of the National Socialists throughout the Reich after the fire in the Reichstag on February 27, 1933, Alexander was taken into custody by the local SA as one of the highest Reich Banner officials in Silesia. He was initially held for a few months in the Dürrgoy concentration camp , a “wild” concentration camp operated by the SA on its own in the south of the Silesian provincial capital.

After the Dürrgoy concentration camp was dissolved in the summer of 1933, Alexander was transferred to the Esterwegen concentration camp near Papenburg in Emsland. There he was shot dead by SS members on September 2, 1933 (the Sabbath) in the moor . This made him the first prisoner to be put to death in the Esterwege concentration camp and in one of the Emsland camps in general. In the course of a preliminary investigation against SS guards involved by the Osnabrück Regional Court in 1949/1950, several fellow prisoners stated unanimously that the SS forced the other prisoners to march past Alexander's body, which was laid out in a yard of the camp, after Alexander's death to draw crosses with his blood.

According to his death notification, he was married and the father of at least one child.

Alexander's funeral in the Jewish cemetery in Wroclaw turned into a spontaneous mass demonstration by the Wroclaw workers: several thousand workers appeared surprisingly at the act of death and shouted “Heil Freiheit!” And “Vache!” To express their solidarity with the violent death Reichsbanner functionaries as well as express their rejection of the ruling regime.

A contemporary investigation into the killing of Alexander and the former Hamburg Police President Otto Eggerstedt and the police officer Bergemann by SS guards came to nothing.

literature

  • Andrea Kaltofen: "The prisoners of the concentration camps in Emsland 1933–1936", in: Esterwegen Memorial Foundation (ed.): Hell in the Moor. The Emslandlager 1933–1945 , pp. 39–48, here p. 43.
  • Hans-Peter Klausch: perpetrator stories: the SS commanders of the early concentration camps in Emsland , 2005, p. 35f.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lists of losses First World War: Prussian list of losses No. 1134 (edition of May 10, 1918).
  2. ↑ Kim Wünschmann: Before Auschwitz, p. 34.
  3. ^ Kurt Metschies: Secret State Archive of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Part II. Special Administrations, pp. 120f.
personal data
SURNAME Alexander, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political activist
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH September 2, 1933
Place of death Esterwegen concentration camp