Max Heyckendorf

Max Heyckendorf (born July 11, 1896 in Hamburg , † December 20, 1979 in Hamburg) was a German communist resistance fighter against National Socialism and victims of National Socialism .

Life

Heyckendorf grew up in simple social circumstances in Hamburg. After attending primary school, he learned the trade of machinist . He was employed as a car mechanic . Max Heyckendorf married Helene Bendixen on August 28, 1920 , who gave birth to her son Günther on May 31, 1921. In the early years of the Weimar Republic , Heyckendorf joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), to which his wife was a member. From 1925 to 1932, husband Max worked as a driver for the Otto F. Wildgruber company .

After the transfer of power to the NSDAP in 1933, Max joined the Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen resistance group . His task was to organize escape routes to Scandinavia for the persecuted . After a long period of unemployment , interrupted by short-term jobs, he was hired as a machine fitter in 1938 at the machine factory Gall & Seitz , Kleine Grasbrook, Vogelreth 2/4 .

In autumn 1942 - according to his own later information on November 18 - he was taken into " protective custody " by the Gestapo in a first wave of arrests at the instigation of Gestapo secretary Henry Helms as head of Department IIa, which is responsible for the "fight against communism / Marxism ”was responsible. During the criminal proceedings, he was transferred to the remand prison on Holstenglacis . After the extensive bombing of Hamburg from late July to early August 1943, numerous prisoners on remand were temporarily released because their cells had largely been destroyed and care was no longer possible. Heyckendorf was one of them, and he decided to take this opportunity and go underground. For a while he and Gustav Bruhn were kept hidden by the communist Käthe Tennigkeit . Because the Gestapo could not determine Heyckendorf's whereabouts, the officers stuck to his wife Helene. The Gestapo agent Polze listened to Heyckendorf's wife without receiving any decisive information about her husband's whereabouts. The wife and son secretly collected food for the hidden father, which son Günther secretly brought to him. After everything was unsuccessful, Helene was taken hostage in place of her husband on December 22, 1944, deported with twelve other women to the Neuengamme concentration camp on April 19, 1945 and hanged three days later without trial . Her son Günther was also eavesdropped by another agent who was quartered in her apartment in order to find out his father's whereabouts. Heyckendorf's son Günther, who knew the place, avoided the danger of being tortured, also by fleeing and went into hiding. He too was arrested shortly before the end of the war, but was released from prison after the British troops marched in.

After the liberation from the Nazi regime , Max Heyckendorf worked as an employee of the state insurance company . He passed on his experiences from resistance and persecution in the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN-BdA).

literature

• Rita Bake : Who is behind this? Streets, squares and bridges in Hamburg named after women. State Center for Political Education, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-929728-29-X ; as pdf: Biogram Helene Heyckendorf (PDF; 959 kB).

Web links

• Helene Heyckendorf: Murdered on April 20, 1945 in Neuengamme concentration camp

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.hamburgwiki.de/wiki/Helene-Heyckendorf-Kehre  ( 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. Retrieved September 24, 2011  
2. ↑ http://www.garten-der-frauen.de/gedenk.html Retrieved September 24, 2011
3. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 24, 2011