Kurt Thomas (resistance fighter)

Kurt Thomas (born February 25, 1904 in Ottweiler ; † March 22, 1938 in the Soviet Union ) was a German SPD and later KPD member and a resistance fighter against National Socialism , who was executed in the Soviet Union in 1938.

Life

Kurt Thomas grew up in Ottweiler and became a miner at the age of 16 . He was involved in the free miners' union. Initially employed at the Kohlwald mine , he then moved to the Dechen mine . In a mining accident in 1926, he suffered a squeeze in the lungs and a fractured lower leg , which affected him for life.

Kurt Thomas became a member of the SPD and the Red Aid and maintained good relations with the KPD . After his official transfer to the KPD in 1932, he was employed there in the secret AM apparatus (anti-military apparatus, a kind of secret intelligence service). In the referendum campaign for the Saar area , he was committed against National Socialism . In the spring of 1934 he traveled to Berlin as a volunteer for a Red Aid delegation to visit the prisoner Ernst Thalmann . With him came Fritz Naumann and Wilhelm Stauner . After repeated urging, they were actually admitted to Thalmann, who was being held in the Moabit remand prison . They later announced to the press that Thälmann had said several times that he had been mistreated while the three-person delegation had been forcibly forced out of the visiting room. This conversation, however, was documented differently, and the statement made by Thälmann, who was actually mistreated by the Gestapo , was probably made up by Thomas. In fact, seven previously agreed questions were asked in the presence of a Gestapo officer. The delegation made this statement in Paris , and Thomas traveled to the United Kingdom , where he told his version of the story in front of the British House of Commons at the invitation of the World Aid Committee for the Victims of Hitlerite Fascism .

In the Saar region, Thomas campaigned for a united front for the labor movement and a merger of the two large miners' unions. In November 1934 he took part in the celebrations for the 17th anniversary of the October Revolution in the Soviet Union. After the result of the vote was announced, he first emigrated to France and then to the Soviet Union. In 1935 he found a job as a locksmith in Moscow. A year later he lectured in the UK.

His further fate is unknown. What is certain is that he was arrested by the NKVD in June 1937 and executed on March 22, 1938.

literature

• Klaus-Michael Mallmann ; Gerhard Paul : The fragmented no. Saarlanders against Hitler . Ed .: Hans-Walter Herrmann (=  resistance and refusal in Saarland 1935–1945 . Volume 1 ). Dietz, Bonn 1989, ISBN 3-8012-5010-5 , p. 257-261 .
• Andreas Herbst , Hermann Weber : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 , pp. 790 ( bundesstiftung-aufverarbeitung.de ).