Lew Rahr

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Lev Alexandrovich Rahr ( Russian Лев Александрович Рар ; born September 30 ^{. Jul} / 13. October  1913 ^greg. In Moscow , † 8. November 1980 in Cologne ) was a Russian exile publicist .

origin

Rahr came from a Baltic merchant family of Scandinavian origin who belonged to the status of hereditary honorary citizens of the Russian Empire (this status was equated with the nobility at the beginning of the 20th century ). He was the son of the businessman Alexander Alexandrowitsch Rahr (1885, Moscow - 1952, London ) and his first wife Elisabeth Gautier-Dufayer (1890, Moscow - July 27, 1920, Kimry ). Alexander Alexandrowitsch Rahr fought as an officer in the First World War in the III. Grenadier - Artillery - Brigade at the Galician front . In 1919 he belonged to a conspiratorial group of officers who were connected with the White Armies advancing from the south on Moscow and planned to support them in the expected capture of the city. After the death of his first wife, Elisabeth Gautier-Dufayer, who was only thirty years old, in 1920 after ten years of marriage, Rahr married Natalija Sergejewna (1897–1980), who came from the old Jewish merchant family and whose brother Sergei was a highly decorated surgeon.

Life

Lew Rahr was born in Moscow in the house built by his grandfather Lew Gautier-Dufayer (1856–1912) in 1898 and which has belonged to his parents since 1912 (today it is the Latvian embassy ). In 1924, the family was Rahr as a " class enemy " after Estonia declared and still moved in the autumn of the year after Libau in Kurland ( Latvia ) to where Lev Rahr at the German School , the High School made and studied at the University of Riga engineering. He then worked as an engineer for a Latvian company in Riga. In the years 1929–1930 he belonged to the Russian- exile anti-communist Brotherhood of Russian Truth ( Russian Братство русской правды) . After the occupation of Latvia by the Red Army in 1940, the family managed to escape to Germany with the last evacuation ship Brake to leave Libau on March 5, 1941 as part of the resettlement of members of German minorities to the German Reich (see German-Baltic States ) . It owed this to its German-sounding name.

In 1942 Rahr returned to the German-occupied Riga and joined the " Association of Russian Solidarists " (Narodno-Trudowoi Soyuz - NTS). This organization was founded by exiled Russians in Belgrade in 1930 to fight for a free Russia; During the German-Soviet war she supported the Russian Liberation Army (ROA) around General Andrei Vlasov . Rahr took part in the rescue of Soviet children who were orphaned after punitive actions by the SS in the Soviet Union, especially in Belarus , and whom he was able to successfully arrange for adoption by Russian families in exile in the Baltic States. In 1944 he returned to Germany, where he worked as adjutant to General Vlasov with Colonel Konstantin Kromiadi and NTS member DA Levizki in the administrative office of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia .

After the occupation of Germany by the Allies, the British appointed him head of the “Roosevelt” refugee camps in Lehrte and “Colorado” in Lemgo in the British occupation zone because of his excellent knowledge of English , where he published the Russian-language magazine Junge Saat ( Ws'chody ) brought out. Together with other NTS leaders and the Russian Orthodox Bishop of the British Occupation Zone, Bishop Nafanail (Lwow), he succeeded in saving many Russian refugees from being extradited to the Soviet Union by the British by issuing false documents .

From 1948 he worked in London in the Russian-language editorial team of the BBC , headed the British section of the NTS and published the Russian-language magazine Der Russe ( Rossijanin ). From 1954 he worked for the NTS in Frankfurt am Main . From 1955 until his death he was a member of the executive office of the NTS. In 1957 he organized the Hague Congress for the Rights and Freedom of Russia in The Hague . From 1959–1961 he headed the foreign section of the NTS from Paris . He then worked for several years in the conspiratorial "closed sector" of the NTS. 1966–1967 he headed the exile Russian “Free Russia Foundation” ( Fond Swobodnoi Rossii ) in Frankfurt . From 1971 to 1974 he was editor-in-chief of the NTS-owned magazine Aussaat ( Posew ). From 1976 until his death he was director of the Possev publishing house in Frankfurt.

In 1980 he was to return to London to head the operations department of the NTS. However, he had an accident on September 7, 1980 in a traffic accident at the Cologne-West motorway junction and succumbed to his injuries on November 8 in a hospital in Cologne .

family

On September 19, 1939, Rahr married Lyudmila Nikolajewna Pavlovskaya (September 5/18, 1913, Saint Petersburg - June 5, 1991, London ) in Riga , the daughter of a professor at the University of Saint Petersburg. After their parents' death, their children George (April 26, 1941, Lübz - September 3, 2014, Johannesburg ) and Elisabeth (born January 27, 1951 in London-Beckenham) moved from London to Johannesburg, where they started a Russian Orthodox church community participated and got involved in this.

The sister Lew Rahrs Elena (December 31, 1910, Moscow - July 9, 1955 Casablanca ) married in 1939 in Libau the lettischstämmigen Roman Martynowitsch Sihle (1900, Odessa - 1971, Cologne), the son of the rector of the Riga University Martin Sihle . Fled to Germany in 1941, they moved to Casablanca in French Morocco in 1949 , where Elena died after an illness. Her grave has been preserved to this day in the Russian cemetery in Casablanca.

The brother Lew Rahrs Gleb Rahr (October 3, 1922, Moscow - 3rd March 2006 Freising ) was also active in the NTS, worked as a journalist and worked as a church historian active in the Russian Church Abroad operates, for their reunification with the Moscow Patriarchate he made strong after 1990.

Works

• Journal Junge Saat (Ws'chody) (Russian). 1945-1946.
• Newspaper Der Russe (Rossijanin) (Russian). London 1952-1954.
• Rannie gody (The early years) (Russian). History of the NTS 1924–1948. Possev-Verlag, Frankfurt and Moscow 2003 (2nd edition), ISBN 978-5-85824-147-8 .
• Those who were executed by madness (Kasnimye sumasschestwiem) (Russian). About the psychiatric prisons in the USSR. Possev-Verlag, Frankfurt 1971.
• The NTS before the war (NTS do woyny) (Russian). Grani magazine № 47, Frankfurt 1960.

literature

• NTS - Association of Russian Solidarists , brochure, Possev-Verlag, Frankfurt 1979;
• AP Stolypin: Na sluschbe Rossii (German: In the service of Russia) (Russian), Possev-Verlag, Frankfurt 1986; ISBN 3-7912-2010-1
• ER Romanow: V bor'be sa Ross iju (German: In the fight for Russia) (Russian), publishing house "Golos", Moscow 1999; ISBN 5-7117-0402-8
• LA Rahr, VA Obolensky: " Rannie gody. Otscherk istorii Narodno-Trudowogo Sojusa 1924–1948 " (German: The early years. Outline of the history of the People's Labor Union 1924–1948) (Russian), Verlag Possev, Moscow 2003; ISBN 978-5-85824-147-8

Web links

• Mentioned in "Spiegel" No. 28/1958.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Posew magazine (Посев), No. 12/1980, Frankfurt 1980. See article on the German genocide in Belarus .