Johannes Zimorski

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Johannes Zimorski (born December 22, 1872 in Mixstadt , † April 24, 1945 in Mauthausen ) was a German ironworker who was arrested several times by the Gestapo as a "fanatical Catholic " for statements hostile to the state and was most recently murdered in the Mauthausen concentration camp .

Life

Johannes Zimorski was one of the typical immigrants from the Polish areas of Prussia to the Ruhr area . From 1906 he lived in the Ruhr area, from 1908 in Oberhausen . Until 1939 he lived with his family in Alt-Oberhausen at Essener Strasse 80, where his wife had a tobacco shop. From 1939 they lived in Oberhausen-Lirich.

Zimorski had worked at the Gutehoffnungshütte in Oberhausen since 1909 and was an early invalid from 1928. In 1938 he had his first conflict with the Gestapo because a former neighbor denounced a conversation on the street in which he accused the Reich government of lying. The investigating Gestapo pleaded for a punishment because they considered him a “complainer” and “fanatical Catholic”, “for whom the welfare of his church takes precedence over that of the state” - from the Nazi point of view, a punishable crime against the totality of the Nazi state . However, the Oberhausen Gestapo did not get through to the court by leaving it with a warning.

At the next denunciation in 1942 he got off lightly again, in December 1943 he was reported when he asked a soldier in the air raid shelter to throw away the weapons. In May 1944 he was sentenced to permanent detention in the sanatorium and nursing home in Düren for " degradation of military strength " due to an alleged "senile dementia" . From there he came in September 1944 with a transport to the Austrian concentration camp Mauthausen, where he was taken as a “German political prisoner”. In April 1945 he was transferred to the "cell structure", the camp prison with an attached gas chamber . According to a surviving inmate, he was gassed.

In 1952 the Oberhausen Chamber of Reparations recognized him as a politically persecuted person.

In 1999 the Catholic Church accepted Johannes Zimorski into the German martyrology of the 20th century as a witness of faith .

literature

  • Helmut Moll (publisher on behalf of the German Bishops' Conference), witnesses for Christ. Das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhundert , Paderborn et al. 1999, 7th revised and updated editions 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , Volume I, pp. 239–242.
  • Vera Bücker: Johannes Zimorski . In this. (Ed.), Cross under the swastika: Oberhausen Catholics in everyday life under the Nazi regime , Verlag Laufen, Oberhausen 2003 (= Church in Oberhausen, 6; ISBN 3-87468-196-3 ), pp. 153–167
  • Vera Bücker: Johannes Zimorski . In: Baldur Hermans (ed.), A Martyrology of Essen from 1940 to 1945 , Episcopal General Vicariate of the Diocese of Essen, Department for Social and Universal Church Tasks, Essen 2004 (= reports and contributions, 42), pp. 87–89
  • Vera Bücker: Zimorski (1872-1945). Ironworkers and convicts against National Socialism in Oberhausen. In: Reimund Haas / Jürgen Bärsch (eds.), Christen an der Ruhr , Volume 3. Aschendorff, Münster 2006, ISBN 3-402-00217-5 , pp. 109–116.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Zimorski, Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Nazi victim
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Mixstadt
DATE OF DEATH April 24, 1945
Place of death Mauthausen