Hella Hirsch

Hella Hirsch (born March 6, 1921 in Posen ; † March 4, 1943 in Plötzensee prison , Berlin ) was a German worker and resistance fighter against National Socialism and a victim of Nazi war justice.

Life and activity

Earlier career

Hirsch was the elder of her parents' two daughters. In her youth she attended the Margarethen Lyceum and a Jewish elementary school. She then completed a commercial apprenticeship at Zeidler and Remark from April 1937 to March 1939. Later, from June 1939 to June 1941, she worked as an assistant to the ophthalmologist Fritz Hirschfeld. From June 1941 Hirsch was forced to work at the IG Farben Aceta plant in Berlin-Rummelsburg .

Politically, Hirsch belonged to a communist-oriented youth group around the electrician Herbert Baum since the 1930s . Despite its ideological orientation and despite the earlier KPD membership of some of its members, the group was not connected to the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and its underground organization that continued to exist illegally in Germany after 1933, but existed as an independent entity, according to Herbert Baums as "more of a circle of friends". Under the spiritual guidance of Baum, she held secret meetings at which political debates and training in the Marxist sense were carried out.

Resistance and death

Since the beginning of the Second World War , the Baum group began to make active efforts to combat Nazi rule from within in the hope of supporting the war efforts of the Allied powers and accelerating the collapse of the Nazi dictatorship. From Hirsch the declaration has been handed down that if Hitler is overthrown, “the Jews will be better off”. In the years 1940 to 1942 the group distributed propaganda material directed against the National Socialists and the war. The Baum Group's measures reached a climax when they carried out an arson attack on the Nazi propaganda exhibition The Soviet Paradise in Berlin's Lustgarten on May 18, 1942 . After the attack, Hirsch went underground for a while. Together with her friend Felix Heymann, whom she married in May 1942, she hid in an apartment in Fredersdorf.

In the course of the break-up of Baum's group, Hirsch was arrested on July 8, 1942 at her place of work - to which she returned, believing that the wave of arrests had subsided. Together with Heinz Birnbaum , Marianne Joachim , Hildegard Loewy , Hanni Meyer , Helmut Neumann , Heinz Rotholz , Siegbert Rotholz , Lothar Salinger , she was indicted before the 2nd Senate of the People's Court .

In the judgment of December 10, 1942, the defendants were found guilty. Hirsch was sentenced to death as well as Birnbaum, Joachim, Loewy, Meyer, Neumann, Heinz and Siegbert Rotholz and Salinger. The defendants Lotte Rotholz, Edith Fraenkel and Alice Hirsch received eight, five and three years in prison , respectively . The nine death sentences were carried out with the guillotine on March 3, 1943 in the Plötzensee prison . The Oberreichsanwalt had the execution of the executions announced on the Berlin advertising pillars, see section Execution here. The decapitated corpses were given to the Charité for teaching and research purposes. The anatomist Hermann Stieve , who was researching the corpses of those who were executed for political reasons like Hirsch, was accused of this after 1945.

Hirsch's sister Alice was later deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp and gassed there.

Afterlife

According to the filmmaker Lothar Schuster , in the culture of remembrance of the FRG the Baum group was simply added to the KPD, although it was not part of it, and largely ignored. In the GDR only the young communist Baum was honored, while the Jewish members of the group, as the ideological models of the Marxist-Leninist ideology, were unpopularly suppressed as unpopular or declared to be communists loyal to the line, including Hirsch.

Today the Alice and Hella Hirsch Ring in Berlin is a reminder of Hirsch and her sister. In 2010 the documentary short film Hella Hirsch and her friends by Barbara Kaspers and Lothar Schuster was released.

execution

The conviction and execution of these young people, they were between 20 and 23 years old, were communicated to the population on a bright red poster. Their names were provided with the legally required additional first names Sara and Israel.

" Notice

sentenced to death by the People's Court on December 10, 1942 for preparation for high treason and treasonous favoring the enemy

Heinz Israel Rotholz , 21 years old,

Heinz Israel Birnbaum , 22 years old,

Lothar Israel Salinger , 23 years old,

Helmuth Israel Neumann , 21 years old,

Siegbert Israel Rotholz , 23 years old,

Hella Sara Hirsch, 21 years old,

Hanni Sara Mayer , 23 years old,

Marianna Sara Joachim , 21 years old and

Hildegard Sara Loewy , 20 years old,

all from Berlin were executed today.

Berlin, March 4, 1943

The senior Reich attorney at the People's Court "

with the subtext

"Announcement of the execution of the death sentences on Heinz Rotholz and his companions"

Memorial stones

The Berlin memorial stone in the Lustgarten

Today two memorial stones in Berlin dedicated to the Baum group also commemorate Hella Hirsch by name.

1. Memorial plaque in Berlin at the Weißensee Jewish Cemetery (entrance: Markus-Reich-Platz).
2. This memorial stone, designed by the sculptor Jürgen Raue, was erected in 1981 on behalf of the magistrate of East Berlin without any further information about the resistance action in the Lustgarten.

literature

• Eric Brothers: Berlin Ghetto: Herbert Baum and the Anti-Fascist Resistance , 2012.
• Regina Scheer : In the shadow of the stars. A Jewish resistance group , Berlin 2004.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Siegbert and Lotte Rotholz - members of the resistance group Baum Bildungsserver Berlin Brandenburg
2. ↑ The Berlin group Baum and the Jewish Resistance ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Page 9 
3. ^ Victor von Gostomski: The Death of Plötzensee: Memories, Events, Documents, 1942-1944 , 1993, p. 237.
4. ↑ Susanne Zimmermann: "... he lives on in his works, which are inserted as immovable stones into the building of science" - On dealing with the work of the anatomist Hermann Stieve (1886–1952) in the post-war period, in: Boris Böhm / Norbert Haase (ed.): Offenders, criminal prosecution, debt relief: doctor's biographies between National Socialist tyranny and German post-war history , p. 37.
5. ↑ : You were young, Jewish and left taz from March 3, 2010
6. ↑ Photo at Margot Pikarski: Youth in Berlin's resistance. Herbert Baum and comrade in arms. Military publishing house of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin 1978.
7. ^ Resistance group around Herbert Baum, "Memorial plaque in Berlin at the Jewish cemetery in Weißensee (entrance: Markus-Reich-Platz)"
8. ^ Resistance group around Herbert Baum. "This memorial stone designed by the sculptor Jürgen Raue was erected in 1981 on behalf of the magistrate of Berlin (East) without any further information about the resistance action in the Lustgarten"