Herbert Balzer

Herbert Balzer (born December 27, 1897 in Breslau ; † April 1945 in Gleina ) was a German KPD functionary and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

The blacksmith Herbert Balzer had been a member of the KPD since 1922 . For several years he worked as a KPD functionary in Niesky . In 1929 he became political director of the KPD sub-district of Görlitz . In the Görlitz district he was a member of the district council.

When the Niesky workers defended themselves against an SA attack in 1931 , one of the SA thugs was hit by a bullet that had been shot by one of his own comrades. Although none of the workers had a firearm at their disposal, the public prosecutor's office constructed an indictment against Balzer, who had helped organize the defensive action, on the grounds of "intellectual responsibility". In the following court proceedings, an acquittal was issued, which had to be confirmed by the Nazi judiciary in a retrial in 1933. However spent Balzer by a year in custody , from which he was then released. In May 1940, Balzer and twelve other anti-fascists were charged again and brought to justice. The charges were based on alleged statements made by five workers who had previously been slain while in custody. With this self-produced "evidence" the Nazi judiciary passed convictions against eleven of the 13 accused. Almost all of those “convicted” lost their lives in concentration camps , as did Balzer .

The death penalty imposed on Herbert Balzer was formally converted into a ten-year prison sentence. In April 1945 he was deported from prison to a concentration camp and executed in the Gleina / Zeitz satellite camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp .

Honors

• In Niesky and Görlitz streets were named after him; the latter has been renamed again. In Niesky there was also the "Herbert Balzer" extended secondary school . An LPG and an intersection in Rothenburg / OL , the volunteer fire brigade in Melaune and an apprentice dormitory in Rietschen also bore his name.
• The Volksmarine named a torpedo boat of the P-6 class Herbert Balzer .

literature

• Luise Kraushaar : German resistance fighters 1933-1945. Biographies and letters. Volume 1. Dietz, Berlin 1970, pp. 69-71.
• Wilfried Wenzel, Monika Schröder: Herbert Balzer. 1897-1945 . Commission for research into the history of the local labor movement at the district leadership of the SED, Görlitz 1987.
• Kurt Schneider: Born 110 years ago. Herbert Balzer . In: Leipzigs Neue , issue 25/26 (December 21, 2007) (PDF file; 952 kB), p. 20.

Web links

• Herbert Balzer ( Memento from February 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) in the Biographical Lexicon of Upper Lusatia