Max Liedtke (journalist)

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Max Liedtke
Memorial plaque in Greifswald

Max Liedtke (born December 25, 1894 in Prussian Holland , East Prussia, † 1955 near Sverdlovsk ) was a German army officer and journalist. In 1993 he was honored as Righteous Among the Nations at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.

Life

Liedtke graduated from high school in Gumbinnen and began studying Lutheran theology at the University of Königsberg . When the First World War broke out, he volunteered for the imperial German army and became a soldier. From 1929 to 1935 he was the publishing director of the Greifswalder Zeitung (today part of the Ostseezeitung ). He was dismissed as editor in 1935 because of his critical attitude towards the Nazis. In 1939 Liedtke was drafted into the Wehrmacht. He was used in Poland, Belgium and Greece in the following years. As a major in the Wehrmacht and local commandant of the eastern Polish city of Przemyśl , at the suggestion of his adjutant Albert Battel , he saved around 500 Jews from Przemyśl from being deported to the Belzec extermination camp by the SS in July 1942 by crossing the bridge over the San and thus the Blocked access to the ghetto to prevent the SS from evacuating the Jewish population. Thereupon he was transferred to the front in the Caucasus on September 30, 1942 . He was assigned to the 1st Panzer Army. He was evacuated to Bornholm in early 1945 . He was one of the German soldiers captured by the Soviets who occupied Bornholm at the end of World War II. He was transferred to the Soviet Union and convicted of alleged war crimes committed in Russia. He died in Soviet captivity in 1955 . He was named Righteous Among the Nations on June 24, 1993 by the Yad Vashem .

literature

  • Götz Liedtke: Father Max. Documentary narrative 2., unchanged. Edition Aachen, Fischer, 1994 ISBN 3-9278-5442-5 .
  • Hamburg Institute for Social Research (Ed.): Crimes of the Wehrmacht. Dimensions of the War of Extermination 1941-1945. Hamburg 2002, p. 591.
  • Norbert Haase: First Lieutenant Dr. Albert Battel and Major Max Liedtke - Confrontation with the SS in Przemyśl, Poland in July 1942. In: Wolfram Wette (Ed.): Retter in Uniform. Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-596-15221-6 , pp. 181-208.
  • Grete Grewolls: Who was who in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania. The dictionary of persons . Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 2011, ISBN 978-3-356-01301-6 , p. 5882 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Israel Gutman , Sara Bender, Daniel Fraenkel and Jakob Borut (eds.): Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations. Germans and Austrians , Yad Vashem and Wallstein Verlag [2005], p. 182.
  2. ↑ Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations , p. 184.
personal data
SURNAME Liedtke, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist, Righteous Among the Nations
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Prussian Holland , East Prussia
DATE OF DEATH 1955
Place of death near Sverdlovsk