Martin Helas

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Martin Helas (born February 5, 1912 in Leipzig , † December 22, 1994 in Berlin ) was a German party functionary ( SED ) and officer in the People's Police (VP). He was secretary of the SED district leadership in Berlin.

Life

The son of a worker learned the trade of a shoemaker after attending elementary school from 1926 to 1929. Immediately after his apprenticeship, he was unemployed from 1929 to 1933. From 1929 to 1931 he was a member of the SAJ and since 1931 a member of the KJVD . As head of the KJVD sub-district of Leipzig-Mitte he did illegal anti-fascist resistance work from February 1933 and was taken into “protective custody” by the SA for three weeks in May 1933 , which he spent together with Rudi Jahn in the Colditz concentration camp . After his release he was again illegally active, arrested again in November 1933 and held in custody at the Dresden police headquarters. In May 1934 he was sentenced to one year in prison by a special court in Freiberg for “continuing prohibited organizations”. He spent his imprisonment in Zwickau prison and in Meusdorf prison near Leipzig. After his release in March 1935, he was unemployed until 1936. In 1937 he went hiking and then worked as a plumber's assistant and shoemaker until 1941. In Leipzig he took part in an illegal youth group which, through Alfred Nothnagel, had contacts with the illegal KPD group around Arthur Hoffmann and William Zipperer . In October 1941 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht, despite his handicap, trained as a veterinary soldier in Bautzen and sent to the Eastern Front in December 1941. Until he fell ill with typhus , he served in a veterinary unit in Roslavl , whose main task was to supply the horse material for the horse artillery and the field gendarmerie. After the hospital stay, he was transferred to the front control center in Verona in Northern Italy in 1943 . While on home leave, he married on April 14, 1945 and then went into hiding. After the US Army marched into Leipzig on April 18, 1945, he reported and went into American captivity as a corporal.

After his release from the Remagen POW camp in June 1945, he returned to his hometown and worked briefly as a worker. In August 1945 he became a member of the KPD and a functionary in Leipzig. A member of the SED since 1946, after attending the State Party School of Saxony in Ottendorf, he became a political employee, then head of department and later secretary of the SED district leadership in Leipzig. From August 1949 to May 1950 he studied at the party college "Karl Marx" in Kleinmachnow. In July 1950 he was a delegate of the III. Party congress of the SED.

In 1950 he joined the DVP and until 1952 was chairman of the party control commission in the DVP's head office. In 1952 he became VP inspector (Colonel of VP) and was temporarily acting vice president and head of the political culture department of the Presidium of the People's Police (PdVP) Berlin.

In June 1952 he was elected to the SED regional leadership in Berlin. From August 1952 to August 1953 he was secretary for culture and popular education of the SED district leadership in Berlin. He was replaced because he “was not yet up to the task”. From August 1953 to August 1954 he was then head of the SPD work department of the West Berlin office of the SED district leadership in Berlin.

From September 1954 to August 1955 he studied at the party college of the CPSU in Moscow (with Hans Bertels, Horst Dohlus and Johann Raskop ) and was then head of the department for security issues of the SED-BL Berlin from 1955 to 1957. From August 1957 to 1960 he was Deputy President of the DVP Berlin for political work. From June 1960 to June 1962 he was a candidate for the SED district leadership in Berlin. After a course in 1961 at the military academy "Friedrich Engels" in Dresden, he was deputy head of the HA security of the DVP headquarters from 1961 to 1963 and from 1963 to 1972 deputy head of the HA combat groups of the Ministry of the Interior (MdI) of the GDR.

Most recently he lived as a veteran in Berlin and was a member of the central management of the committee of anti-fascist resistance fighters in the GDR .

Awards

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Congratulations on your 75th birthday in Neues Deutschland on February 5, 1987.
personal data
SURNAME Helas, Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German party official and policeman
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH December 22, 1994
Place of death Berlin