Herta Soswinski

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Herta Soswinski , nee Mehl , also Hertha Mehl-Soswinski (born April 16, 1917 in Znojmo ; died June 2, 2004 in Vienna ) was an Austrian resistance fighter , survivor of the Holocaust , later a translator and contemporary witness .

Life

Mehl's grandfather was a fruit and vegetable wholesaler. Her father, who worked as a general agent in the wood industry, became unemployed in 1935 and died in 1936, her mother died in 1923. She first lived with her grandparents, then with Mělník when her father had remarried. After attending a Czech school, she graduated from a German commercial school in Bodenbach from 1932 to 1934 . She eventually moved to Prague for work. Initially in a non-partisan youth organization, she has been politically active with the communists since the Sudeten crisis . She supported politically persecuted Sudeten Germans who had fled to Prague, and eventually became district director of KSČ there . Her cover name was Hanka . As a Jew, she lost her job during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia at the end of March 1940 due to Nazi legislation. On August 27, 1940, she was arrested and imprisoned in Prague on charges of high treason in connection with communist resistance activities. The arrest came after extorted statements from a party friend who revealed her name under torture. She was imprisoned in the Pankrác prison and subjected to intensified interrogation. She was held in custody by the Gestapo for almost a year and a half . While in prison, she began to write poetry in Czech and German.

It was on 14 January 1942 as a political prisoner in the Ravensbrück concentration camp deported and had there under difficult conditions forced labor afford. Her fellow prisoners there included Käthe Leichter and Olga Prestes . She was interned in Ravensbrück until October 5, 1942. Then she was transferred as a Jew to the Auschwitz concentration camp (inmate number 21,709). There she had to take over office work in the central construction management of the Waffen SS and police , where plans for all buildings (including the gas chambers and crematoria ) were drawn up and the construction work was coordinated. In Auschwitz, as in Ravensbrück, she participated in the camp resistance. In the course of the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, she managed to flee to Ravensbrück on the "evacuation transport" in January 1945. Her stepmother was murdered in the gas chamber in Auschwitz. After the liberation from National Socialism , Mehl returned briefly to Prague on May 20, 1945. Despite typhus and vomiting diarrhea, she survived the concentration camp and finally settled in Vienna.

She married the concentration camp survivor Ludwig Soswinski , whom she had already met in Auschwitz as part of the resistance activities. She later resigned from the KPÖ together with her husband . The couple had a daughter and a son. Herta Soswinski worked as a translator and was an important contemporary witness.

Her granddaughter Sylvia Soswinski presented her life story in a publication and in lectures.

Texts and interviews

Translations (selection)

  • The manuscripts of King Wenceslas IV. Translated into German by Herta Soswinski. Edited by Josef Krása , Vienna, Forum Verlag 1971
  • Václav Čtvrtek (Author), Jan Cerný (Illustrator): The Acorn Man , 1978
  • Karel Poláček : Offside, From the Lives of Football Fans , Rosenheim Publishing House 1971
  • Jiří Siblík : Paul Cézanne - drawings and watercolors , Vienna, Forum-Verlag 1971
  • Jaroslav Žák : The Charred Pythagoras , Rosenheim Publishing House 1971

literature

  • Myriam Everard, Francisca de Haan: Rosa Manus (1881–1942) , The International Life and Legacy of a Jewish Dutch Feminist,
  • Peter Hallama: Between Popular Front and Block Formation , The Vienna Czechs and the KSC 1948–1952. Innsbruck: StudienVerlag 2009. ISBN 978-3-7065-4710-9 .
  • Constanze Jaiser: Poetic testimonies: poems from the women's concentration camp Ravensbrück 1939–1945 , JB Metzler, 2000, ISBN 978-3-476-45253-5 .
  • Sylvia Soswinski: Soswinski Herta, b. Flour; Resistance fighter and political activist . In: Ilse Korotin (ed.): BiografıA. Lexicon of Austrian Women. Volume 3: P-Z. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2016, ISBN 978-3-205-79590-2 , p. 3107.
  • Sylvia Soswinski: Surviving your own death ... women in the resistance against National Socialism. Personal approaches to the biography of Herta Soswinski (1917–2004) . In: Laufstufen 3/2006: Nazi history and rapprochements of the 3rd generation.
  • Rochelle G. Saidel: The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp . University of Wisconsin Press, 2004. 336 pages. ISBN 0-299-19860-X .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Constanze Jaiser: Poetic testimonies: poems from the women's concentration camp Ravensbrück 1939–1945 , JB Metzler, 2000, p. 360f.
  2. ↑ a b Sylvia Soswinski: Soswinski Herta, geb. Flour; Resistance fighter and political activist . In: Ilse Korotin: biografiA. Lexicon of Austrian Women , Volume 3, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2016, p. 3107
  3. ^ Architecture of Murder: The Auschwitz-Birkenau Blueprints , accessed December 19, 2017
  4. ^ Rochelle G. Saidel: The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp . University of Wisconsin Press, 2004, pp. 51f.
  5. ↑ biografiA working groups: New results from women's biography research , accessed on December 18, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Soswinski, Herta
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mehl, Herta (maiden name); Mehl-Soswinski, Hertha (alternative name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian survivor of the Holocaust, resistance fighter, later translator and contemporary witness
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Znojmo
DATE OF DEATH June 2, 2004
Place of death Vienna