Jean Jülich

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jean Jülich 2007

Jean Jülich (born April 18, 1929 in Cologne ; † October 19, 2011 there ) was a German resistance fighter . He was a member of the Ehrenfeld group during World War II . This was part of the Edelweiss Pirates , a youth protest movement that resisted the National Socialists in Cologne, among other places. He was honored as Righteous Among the Nations in 1984 by the Yad Vashem Memorial . From 2003 to 2008, Jülich was a member of the advisory board of the “ Committee for a Democratic UN ” founded in the same year .

history

Jean Jülich at the Edelweiss Pirate Festival in the Friedenspark in Cologne on June 17, 2007

Jülich was the son of a KPD functionary. In 1942, at the age of thirteen, he joined the boys and girls of the Edelweiss Pirates, who met every evening in Sülz on Manderscheider Platz. Actions by the group included a. to paint over propaganda posters and derail ammunition trains. Jülich was introduced to the group together with Heinz Wunderlich and Willi Colling by his school friend and later fellow prisoner of the Gestapo Ferdinand Steingass . The hard core of the resisters hid in Cologne-Ehrenfeld in the bombed houses.

Outwardly, too, the Edelweiss Pirates were very different from the members of the Hitler Youth . They wore long hair, checked shirts and scarves. At a time when there was little resistance, they sang: "Yes, where the knife blades flash and the Hitler Youth scurry and the edelweiss pirates behind them / what can life give us, we want to be free from Hitler." so reported Jülich - it was not her business to have profound political discussions. At the weekend they drove to the Siebengebirge to the Blue Lake, where they met up to 250 young people from Düsseldorf, Wuppertal, Solingen and Cologne.

At this time, further groups of edelweiss pirates formed in Ehrenfeld. Some of them went underground in 1944 together with Hans Steinbrück , a former prisoner of the Cologne-Messe subcamp, who had been assigned to a bomb clearance squad and was able to flee. This structure became life-saving for deserters, slave laborers, and Jews. Since they were unable to get ration cards and rent apartments in their situation of escape and persecution, life had to be organized together illegally. In Ehrenfeld, the edelweiss pirates were soon made responsible for everything if something got lost somewhere. Together with deserters and forced laborers, edelweiss pirates formed a resistance group with Hans Steinbrück and his pregnant partner Cilly Servé .

Jülich, who was living with his grandparents in Sülz at the time, came into contact through Barthel Schink . Jülich's father was in prison ; as a communist he had gone underground as early as 1932. His mother had to work hard for a living and couldn't look after him. At the same time, they radicalized their resistance to the Nazis. For example, on September 28, 1944, Roland Lorent shot the Nazi man Soentgen, who was particularly hated for his denunciations that had cost many people their lives. When it became possible to get hold of explosives, they planned to blow up the Gestapo headquarters in Cologne. Jülich organized the necessary detonators, did not go with them to the Cologne-Ehrenfeld underground, but had to react several times against suspicions and summonses regarding edelweiss pirates, invent stories and withstand interrogations.

Gestapo detention

In 1944, Jülich was arrested by the Gestapo and interrogated and tortured for weeks at the Gestapo headquarters in Cologne, the " EL-DE-Haus ", for the planned demolition of which he had obtained fuses. His identity as an edelweiss pirate had to be denied for the sake of the hoped-for freedom, which he succeeded. Because of these torture protocols, his opponents denied him being an edelweiss pirate. Until 2003 he was officially considered the criminal the Gestapo had called him. He associated survival with the idea of ​​being able to escape torture in the “anonymity of a concentration camp” without knowing the reality of a concentration camp, as he later discovered. His comrades, including Hans Steinbrück, Jülich's friend Barthel Schink and eleven others, were publicly hanged by the Nazis a month later, on November 10, 1944, at Ehrenfeld train station. Jülich and his friends learned of the execution by a group of members of the communist resistance group NKFD . Until the end of the war, the then 15-year-old remained in the Gestapo prison of the Brauweiler Abbey , in the prisons of Siegburg , Butzbach and finally in the Rockenberg youth prison without judgment and had to fight for his survival against abuse, illness and malnutrition.

When the American tanks finally stood in front of Jülich's prison at the end of March 1945, many other prisoners had died of torture or illness.

Further work

Even after the end of the war, Jülich continued to support the needs of those in need. For years he organized and moderated the charity carnival session Dielösige 1 , which started very small in a restaurant and ended up filling the Mülheim town hall. For a long time Jülich was the host of the legendary Cologne music pub Blomekörvge (pronunciation: "Blomekörvje"), where the Bläck Fööss and BAP performed , among others . For his commitment as a tenant of the Severinstorburg and a citizen of the Severinsviertel, he received the Severins Citizens' Prize in 2006 and was later elected to the board of the association of the same name as a jury member.

Late honors

He was particularly committed to preventing the events of the National Socialist era from being forgotten, which is why he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon in 1991. Together with the edelweiss pirates Gertrud Koch and Peter Schäfer , he stood out with various publications, lectures and campaigns. In May 2007, the Rhineland Regional Association awarded all three of them the Rhineland Taler.

Grave in Cologne's south cemetery

In 2008 he received the Heine bust together with the former members of the Edelweiss Pirates Gertrud Koch, Wolfgang Schwarz and Fritz Theilen in Düsseldorf. The award given by the Düsseldorf Circle of Friends of Heinrich Heine recognizes his extraordinary activities in the sense of the critical spirit.

When Jürgen Roters awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon in April 2011 to the five remaining members of the Cologne resistance groups, Jülich was a guest of honor.

His grave is located in Cologne's southern cemetery (hallway 2).

Two years after his death, near his apartment in Südstadt, a footpath between Karl-Korn- Strasse and the roundabout in the Stollwerckhof estate was named after him. About 200 people, including his widow Karin, were present at the inauguration. Rolly Brings and the pub choir Singing Elderberry sang some of his songs.

Movie

literature

Web links

Commons : Jean Jülich  - Collection of Images

Obituaries

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ www.report-k.de: Edelweiss pirate Jean Jülich passed away  ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; News from October 19, 2011.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.report-k.de  
  2. ↑ Committee for a Democratic UN: Associates of KDUN: Alumni Associates ( Memento of the original of March 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kdun.org
  3. ↑ www.report-k.de: The solving one: One alone amuses everyone - Jean Jülich  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; News from January 23, 2008.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.report-k.de  
  4. ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau from July 15, 2004: Online  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Von Edelweißpiraten Jean Jülich does not see himself as a resistance fighter@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.report-k.de  
  5. ↑ Press information: Board of Directors of the Severins Bürgerpreis - Jury ( Memento of the original from March 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on October 25, 2011; PDF; 128 kB)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.severinsviertel.info
  6. ^ Rhineland Regional Association: Rolly Brings and the Edelweiss Pirates receive Rhineland thalers. Award for work against racism ( memento of the original dated August 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Message from May 23, 2007. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lvr.de
  7. ↑ Mattias Pesch: Edelweisspiraten "Role models an civil courage" , in: Kölner Stadtanzeiger from April 14, 2011, p. 26 online (accessed June 23, 2016).
  8. ↑ Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger from 23./24. November 2013, p. 36
personal data
SURNAME Jülich, Jean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter, member of the Cologne Edelweiss Pirates and Righteous Among the Nations
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH October 19, 2011
Place of death Cologne