Max Schneider (politician, 1921)

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Max Schneider (born December 4, 1921 in Vienna ; † June 12, 2010 , ibid) was an Austrian politician (member of the Central Committee and Vienna State Secretary of the KPÖ ). After his break with the party line on the occasion of the Prague Spring in 1968, he became involved as a contemporary witness about the time of National Socialism and the Second World War .

Life

Max Schneider was born as the first child of the non-religious Jewish family Abraham and Josefine Schneider in Vienna, where he also grew up. His sister Gertrude was born in 1923 and his brother Robert in 1936. Schneider was a member of the Rote Falken in his childhood and early adolescence and, after they were banned in 1934, joined the then illegal communist youth organization . After completing school he did an apprenticeship and came through his future wife Ruth to the socialist - Zionist youth organization Hashomer Hatzair , which after the annexation of Austria in March 1938 enabled the two to emigrate to England in the early summer of 1939 . There Schneider worked as a farm worker.

After the outbreak of the Second World War he was interned in Canada and returned to England in 1942, where he worked in the armaments industry . He married and volunteered for the British Army in 1943 . After basic training he fought under the code name Peter Shelley in a Scottish infantry unit in France, Belgium and Holland for the liberation of his homeland from National Socialism before he was seriously wounded in northern Germany in April 1945 . Schneider was recognized for his bravery.

Of his entire family, only his sister survived the Nazi era ; it came to England in 1939 on a Kindertransport . His parents and his younger brother Robert were on February 6, 1942 deported and in early 1943 the extermination camp at Riga murdered.

Simmering fire hall - grave of Max Schneider

In 1947 Schneider returned to Austria with his wife. 1947–1948 he completed the post-war high school diploma at the municipality of Vienna. From 1947 he became active in the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ), for which he worked as District Secretary for Styria in Graz from the mid-1950s . In the 1960s he finally worked in Vienna as state secretary of the KPÖ. In 1968 he was voted out of office for his position on the Prague Spring , which he advocated, and resigned from the KPÖ as one of 27 members of the Central Committee .

Schneider then worked in the private sector and was active alongside and especially after his retirement as an eyewitness at schools to convey to young people all over Austria that fascist tendencies must be fought in their beginnings and in their core.

In 2008 Schneider, "[who made important contributions to the community with his] moral courage", was awarded the Golden Merit Medal by the federal state of Vienna .

He was buried in the cemetery of the Simmering fire hall (Section E19, No. 27).

Awards and honors

literature

  • Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (Ed.), Brigitte Bailer-Galanda (Ausw., Red. And Ed.): Jüdische Schicksale. Reports from the persecuted . ÖBV, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-216-06377-1 , pp. 479-481.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Stories in Schools (PDF; 35 kB), accessed on September 10, 2010.
  2. ^ Archive report of the town hall correspondence from February 5, 2008 , accessed on September 10, 2010.
personal data
SURNAME Schneider, Max
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Shelley, Peter (code name as British soldier in World War II)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician (KPÖ), activist against fascism and contemporary witness of the Nazi era
DATE OF BIRTH 4th December 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH June 12, 2010
Place of death Vienna