Hans Schwarz (resistance fighter)

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Hans Schwarz , actually Johann Karl Svarz (born March 27, 1904 in Vienna ; † April 6, 1970 ) was an Austrian Marxist, concentration camp prisoner and anti-fascist resistance fighter .

Life

Schwarz was born as Johann Karl Svarz and the son of a social democratic railroad worker in Vienna. Here he attended high school and from 1920 belonged to the Kinderfreunde and the Socialist Workers' Youth . As a member of the illegal KPÖ , he took part in the February fighting in 1934 and then fled to Switzerland. From February 1935 he lived again in Austria and worked as the organizational secretary of the illegal KJVÖ . Schwarz was arrested on April 10, 1937 and sentenced on November 9, 1937 to 18 months' arrest by the District Court for Criminal Matters Vienna I for producing and distributing communist printed matter. In the course of the February amnesty, he was released on February 18, 1938.

Registration card of Hans Schwarz as a prisoner in the National Socialist concentration camp Dachau

After Austria was annexed to the German Reich, he was sent to the Dachau concentration camp on September 5, 1938 , where he was used as a camp clerk. Because of subversive activity, he was transferred to Neuengamme concentration camp in October 1944 , where he was also employed as a prisoner camp clerk. Schwarz headed the International Prisoner Committee there in Neuengamme . At the beginning of May 1945 he was able to leave on the way to the SS barracks in Langenhorn .

Ehrenfeld Geschwister-Scholl-Foundation

Immediately after the war, he worked as the chairman of the Austrian delegation in the British occupation zone and founded the committee of former political prisoners in Hamburg , which already carried out an exploration trip through Germany in June 1945 to obtain information about so-called concentration camp support centers in various parts of the country. He appeared as a witness in the main Neuengamme trial . Schwarz later also became general secretary of the successor organization, the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN).

From May 1958 he was General Secretary of the Amicale de Neuengamme , the Neuengamme International Camp Community. His extensive estate was initially kept at the Research Center for Contemporary History Hamburg (FStHH) and handed over to the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial in 2007. In addition to numerous reports from prisoners that Schwarz systematically collected, he also documents the central role that he played in establishing a national organization of surviving political prisoners in Germany.

In the area of ​​the honorary field of the Geschwister-Scholl-Foundation , grid square Bn 73 No. 225, there is a pillow stone in honor of Hans Schwarz together with the German resistance fighter and author Gertrud Meyer .

literature

  • Sabine Homann-Engel, Michael Grill: "... That wasn't a walk in summer": The story of a survivors' association , Konkret, 2008.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance, No. 20000 / S1219
  2. ^ Cushion stone for Hans Schwarz and Gertrud Meyer (1898-1975) at genealogy.net
personal data
SURNAME Black, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Svarz, Johann Karl (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian Marxist, concentration camp prisoner and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH March 27, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH April 6, 1970