Hugo Salzmann

Hugo Salzmann (born February 4, 1903 in Kreuznach , † 1979 ) was a German trade unionist , communist in the Weimar Republic and anti-fascist during and after World War II .

Life

Salzmann was born the son of a glassmaker. He completed an apprenticeship as a metal lathe operator in Bad Kreuznach. From 1923 to 1931 he was head of the regional youth metalworkers . At the same time in Bad Kreuznach he was temporarily chairman of the Red Aid in Bad-Kreuznach, chairman of the works council at the company "Ost und Scherer", from 1925 organizational head of the KPD and political director of the League against Fascism . In 1929 he was elected to the city council for the KPD. From 1930 to early 1933, Salzmann is said to have been the local chairman of the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB).

Hugo Salzmann married Juliana Sternat in 1930. Their son Hugo was born on November 2, 1932.

exile

After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, the family fled to the Saar region and shortly afterwards to Paris . Salzmann worked there as a packer and messenger, soon he was recognized as an emigrant and worked for the exile organizations of the KPD. Salzmann also worked for trade union organizations in exile in France.

Persecution, imprisonment

After the attack on Poland at the beginning of the Second World War , Hugo Salzmann was arrested by the French police in early September 1939 and interned in Le Vernet .
Juliana Salzmann was also arrested in Paris in 1940. Their son Hugo stayed with their sister in Styria . Juliana Salzmann was sent to prison in Koblenz and a year later to the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp , where she died of typhus on December 5, 1944 .

End of 1941, Hugo Salzmann was in Germany delivered detained in Koblenz and 1943 there for conspiracy to commit treason to eight years in prison convicted. He served the sentence in the prison in Butzbach / Hessen . Hugo Salzmann was freed from prison by Americans in May 1945.

post war period

After the end of the Second World War, Salzmann became active again as a trade unionist and was elected to the city council of Bad Kreuznach for the KPD in 1945. He also acquired a district council mandate for the KPD. In 1946 Hugo Salzmann took his son, born in 1932, back into his home. The two did not understand each other (anymore). Hugo Salzmann died in 1979. His son Hugo now lives with his family in Austria .

A street in Bad Kreuznach is named after Hugo Salzmann.

literature

• Erich Hackl : Salzmann family. A story from our midst. Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3257067583
• Siegfried Mielke , Kolja Lindner: Hugo Salzmann (1903–1979) , In: Siegfried Mielke, Stefan Heinz (Ed.) With the collaboration of Julia Pietsch: Emigrated metal trade unionists in the fight against the Nazi regime (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration. Volume 3). Metropol, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86331-210-7 , pp. 739-749.
• Hans Canjé: Not an everyday honor. Bad Kreuznach commemorates the communist Hugo Salzmann . In: Neues Deutschland from 24./25. August 2013, p. W 7

Web links

• Bettina Giersberg: The work of the writer Rudolf Leonhard. (PDF; 1.3 MB) (with multiple mentions by Hugo Salzmann)
• Hugo Salzmann family - Koblenz memorial