Hugo Simon (resistance fighter)

Hugo Simon (born January 3, 1909 in Mittelschmalkalden ; † April 1945 ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Simon had twelve half-siblings from his father's first marriage and two half-brothers whom his mother brought into the marriage. In 1912 the family moved to Stadtlengsfeld . His first contact with critical ideas came from his teacher at the elementary school.

In 1922, Simon began an apprenticeship as a butcher in the “Kronstätt” butcher's shop in Bad Salzungen ; In 1925 he traveled to New York and worked there in his profession. In 1927 love brought him back to Stadtlengsfeld, where he married in 1930. Then he retrained as a tusker at Wintershall AG in Merkers . During this time as a teacher he got to know and appreciate his brother-in-law Otto Schlegel , a communist, better. From 1933, both took over the resistance against fascism in the potash plant. Its activities included - in addition to political education about the criminal character of National Socialism and its war plans - with the beginning of the Second World War , acts of sabotage to hinder arms production. A UK (indispensable) position saved Simon military service and the front.

Simon had contacts with other resistance networks as early as 1933 with Richard Eyermann in Bad Salzungen and during the Second World War with the resistance group around Theodor Neubauer and Magnus Poser , who worked together with the Saefkow-Jacob-Bästlein organization .

In November 1944, Simon was noticed during inspections by the Gestapo to secure the planned gold deposits in the Merkers potash works. House searches in his house in Stadtlengsfeld remained without result. On December 4, 1944, the Gestapo announced that he would be arrested on December 5, 1944 at 8 a.m. It was an attempt to persuade him to flee in order to make use of the kin liability.

Punctually at 8 a.m. the Gestapo stood in the door and it went first with an escort across Stadtlengsfeld to deter the others. In the former estate there was a police station with holding cells, here he was interrogated. On December 8, 1944, he was brought to the train station through the back exit of the cowshed, through the grounds of the former municipal gardening facility, and taken by train via Bad Salzungen and Eisenach to the Gestapo headquarters in Weimar. From there it went to the quarry on the great Gleichberg to the labor education camp (AEL) in Römhild . Most recently he worked at a car repair shop (Christ) in Römhild. In early April 1945, at the end of the death march in the direction of the Flossenbürg concentration camp, he was shot by the leader of the death march.

literature

• Federal Agency for Civic Education (ed.): Memorials for the victims of National Socialism. Volume II, Bonn, p. 882
• Gertrud Glondajewski, Heinz Schumann: The Neubauer Poser Group. Documents and materials of the illegal anti-fascist struggle (Thuringia 1939 to 1945). Berlin 1957 detail
• Olaf Groehler : The prescribed anti-fascism. The reception of the Thuringian communist resistance in the GDR. In: Detlev Heiden / Gunther Mai (ed.): National Socialism in Thuringia. Weimar 1995, pp. 531-550