Johann Kühn (Nazi victim)

Johann Heinrich Kühn (born March 9, 1897 in Bremen ; † May 8, 1945 in Bergen-Belsen ) was a German SPD functionary and a victim of National Socialism .

biography

Family, education and work

Bold was the son of a stonemason who died early. The family lived in Bremen at Gröpelinger Heerstraße 92/94 from 1905 . After elementary school he learned mechanical engineering. During the First World War he served in the Navy from 1915 to 1918. After the war he worked again as a locksmith. From 1919 to 1933 he was a union member in the German Metal Workers' Association . Since 1922 he was married to Luise Speichert; both had a daughter.

Politics and Nazi Persecution

Kühn had been a member of the SPD since 1910. In 1933, after the SPD was banned, he continued to operate illegally. He was the SPD district leader in Groepelingen. In 1934 he was arrested for “preparing for high treason ”, then sentenced in 1935 by the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Bremen to 3 ½ years in prison and imprisoned in the penitentiary of Oslebshausen in Bremen. In 1938 he was released, but on September 1, 1939, at the beginning of the war, he was arrested again and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp as a so-called protective prisoner .

The last message from him comes from February 1945. He had been released from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and had to start the death march to the north, including to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp , under SS guard immediately on April 21st - like 33,000 other prisoners . He died or was shot dead on the march, or he died in the Bergen-Belsen camp. He was declared dead on May 8, 1945, the day of the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht .

Honors

• The Johann Kühn street in Bremen- Gröpelingen was named after him.
• A memorial stone as a stumbling block in Bremen, Gröpelinger Heerstraße 92/94, reminds of him.

literature

• Monika Porsch: Bremer Straßenlexikon , complete edition. Schünemann, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-7961-1850-X .

Web links

• Searching for traces: memorial stone in memory of Johann Kühn (PDF; 82 kB)