Josef Meisel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Josef Meisel , known as Pepi Meisel (born April 18, 1911 in Waag-Neustadl , Austria-Hungary , † February 11, 1993 in Vienna ), was a long-time Austrian communist, interbrigadist and resistance fighter against National Socialism , who fled Auschwitz succeeded.

Life

Origin, KPÖ engagement, resistance to Austrofascism

Josef Meisel was the son of the master carpenter Jakob Meisel and his wife Frieda, née Brod. He had two older brothers and a younger step-brother from his father's second marriage. The trained carpenter's assistant belonged to the Communist Youth of Austria and was involved in the KPÖ in Vienna from 1929 . He took part in the February fighting in 1934 and then settled in Czechoslovakia , from which he was expelled to the Soviet Union in 1934 . He attended the International Lenin School in Moscow for two years and returned illegally to Vienna in the summer of 1936. After his arrest in October 1936, he was sent to the Wöllersdorf detention camp for illegal party work and given an amnesty in February 1938 .

Interbrigadist and resistance fighter

After the " Anschluss of Austria " to the National Socialist German Reich , he left for Spain at the end of April 1938 and took part in the Spanish Civil War against the establishment of a dictatorship under Francisco Franco as cadre commander of the Edgar André Battalion of the International Brigades . After the defeat of the Republicans, he illegally transferred to France in February 1939 and from there to Belgium two months later .

During the Second World War he was arrested there after the German occupation of Belgium in May 1940 and interned in the French camp of Saint-Cyprien . In July 1940 he managed to escape from the camp and in the following months he hired himself as a woodcutter in the Pyrenees . From the beginning of 1941 he belonged to the French resistance and finally acted as a liaison man in south-west France for smuggled Nazi opponents in German offices. In February 1943 he went to Vienna on behalf of the party under the alias of Raymond Mesmer, disguised as a French foreign worker, where he worked in a carpentry shop and was politically active in illegality. On May 17, 1943, he was arrested, interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo at Schwendermarkt .

Prisoner in Auschwitz concentration camp, escape and liberation

On February 18, 1944, Meisel was transferred to the main camp of Auschwitz (prisoner number 173.943), where he joined the Auschwitz combat group and became active in the illegal camp resistance. According to the Auschwitz survivor Hermann Langbein , Meisel was protected from selections in the camp because he was a political prisoner of the Gestapo , even though he was Jewish. However, the illegal resistance organization helped Meisel to escape, as an execution order from the Vienna Gestapo was expected against him. With the Polish communist Szymon Zajdow-Wojnarek (prisoner no. 27.832), a Jewish prisoner who also belonged to the camp resistance, he escaped from the main camp on July 22, 1944 in an adventurous manner. Langbein commented on escapes in the spring and summer of 1944 as follows: “At that time, organized escapes had almost become routine for the combat group: those designated for the escape hid within the large chain of posts. After three nights - that is how long the chain of guards stayed in place during the nights when the absence of prisoners was found at the evening roll call - they snuck out of their hiding place to an agreed meeting point, where employees of the Polish underground movement awaited them and helped them on. "With the help of Polish people Meisel was able to hide partisans in a village near Krakow until the Red Army liberated the area.

After the liberation, he taught at the Antifa School in Krasnogorsk from January 1945. In February 1945 he informed the KPD functionary Wilhelm Pieck in Moscow about the communist prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp. He emphasized the camp resistance, particularly borne by Austrians, and named the names Langbein and Burger . He criticized the behavior of many German communists as “not good”, especially in their function as brutal kapos . He also reported on the extermination of the Hungarian Jews who were murdered by gas in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp .

Activity after the end of the war

In September 1945 he returned to Vienna as the only survivor of his family. His father, who emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1939, was arrested there in the course of Stalin's "purges" and was presumably murdered. His stepmother, whom his father married after the death of his first wife, and his younger stepbrother were missing after the German annexation of the Czech Republic . His brother Paul (1909–1943) perished in Auschwitz, his other brother Alexander (1904–1942) in Sachsenhausen . Meisel married the Holocaust survivor Maria Kabran in 1947 ; the marriage resulted in two sons.

At the end of 1945 he was working again for the KPÖ in Wiener Neustadt . From 1946 to 1964 he was state secretary of the party in Lower Austria and then until 1969 responsible for press administration. From 1946 to 1969 he was also a member of the Central Committee of the KPÖ. Together with the Auschwitz survivor Heinrich Dürmayer , he traveled to Poland at the end of the 1950s to dismiss the then General Secretary of the International Auschwitz Committee , Hermann Langbein . The background was Langbein's criticism of the secret trial against Imre Nagy . Meisel was expelled from the party in 1970 after the "disputes over the intervention of the Warsaw Pact states" in the course of the crackdown on the Prague Spring . He then worked for the Vienna Diary and held a leading position in the union unity faction in the mostly social democratic ÖGB . He was a permanent member of the documentation archive of the Austrian Resistance and author of two published reports.

Fonts

  • “Now we have you, Meisel!”: Fight, resistance and persecution of an Austrian anti-fascist (1911–1945) (= biographical texts on cultural and contemporary history 2). Edited by the Association of Critical Social Science and Political Education. Publishing house for social criticism , Vienna 1985, ISBN 3-900351-43-0 .
  • The Wall in Your Mind: Memories of an Excluded Communist; 1945–1970 (= biographical texts on cultural and contemporary history 2). Interview and editor: Peter Lachnit, ed. from the Association for Critical Social Science and Political Education. Publishing house for social criticism , Vienna 1986, ISBN 3-900351-52-X .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Biographical handbook of German-speaking emigration after 1933 , Volume 1: Politics, Economy, Public Life , Munich 1980, p. 487
  2. ↑ Erica Fischer : The most important thing is to remain true to yourself. The story of the twin sisters Rosl and Liesl , Vienna 2005, p. 101
  3. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz , Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin 1980, p. 80, ISBN 3-548-33014-2
  4. ^ Danuta Czech : Calendar of the events in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp 1939–1945 . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-498-00884-6 , p. 828.
  5. ↑ Hermann Langbein: … not like sheep to the slaughter. Resistance in the National Socialist concentration camps 1938–1945 , Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-596-23486-7 , p. 290
  6. ^ Henryk Świebocki: Rescuing prisoners  ( 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. , PDF@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.3pytania.pl  
  7. ↑ Karin Hartewig: Returned. The history of the Jewish communists in the GDR. Böhlau, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-412-02800-2 , p. 86f (Habilitation Uni Essen 2000, 646 pages).
  8. ^ Brigitte Bailer , Bertrand Perz , Heidemarie Uhl : The Austrian memorial in the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. History of origin and redesign . In: Dirk Rupnow , Heidemarie Uhl (Hrsg.): Exhibiting contemporary history in Austria. Museums - memorials - exhibitions , Böhlau, Vienna a. a. 2011, ISBN 978-3-205-78531-6 , p. 161
personal data
SURNAME Meisel, Josef
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meisel, Pepi (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian party functionary (KPÖ), interbrigadist, resistance fighter and Auschwitz survivor
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Waag-Neustadl
DATE OF DEATH February 11, 1993
Place of death Vienna