Meinerzhagener anti-fascist resistance group

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The Meinerzhagener anti-fascist resistance group was a German group of anti-fascist workers who went into resistance against National Socialism and whose members were executed. The resistance group consisted of Fritz Müller, born in Meinerzhagen (born July 13, 1895 or 1897 in the Wiebelsaat district ), Friedrich-Wilhelm Kessler (born October 4, 1902 in the Valbert district ), Jakob Junglas (born October 28, 1882 in Burgen (Mosel ) ) and Ernst Hollweg (born March 16, 1895 in Börlinghausen ) as well as four Soviet forced laborers whose names are not known . The death of the eight anti-fascists is considered an end- stage crime .

history

Müller, Junglas, Kessler, Hollweg and the forced laborers were employed by the Otto Fuchs works in Meinerzhagen in the Sauerland , an armaments factory that was important to the war effort . The Fuchs-Werke supplied, among other things, parts of the Junkers war aircraft. The actions of the Meinerzhagen resistance group aimed at shortening the war through strike or hidden sabotage of war production as well as requests to desert from the Volkssturm as part of the Sauerland Freikorps formed for this purpose . Solidarity with the predominantly Soviet prisoners in the company's own forced labor camp at the Otto Fuchs Works played an important role. With a city population of around 5,000, there were 1,700 deported, so-called "foreign ethnic" forced laborers living in Meinerzhagen. In the entire Märkisches Kreis there were between 15,000 and 20,000. Some survivors, such as the Ukrainian slave laborer Lyuba Leontjewna Meleschko, reported on the terrible conditions in the factory with child labor, unpaid ten-hour shifts and constant surveillance after the end of the Cold War , when compensation was finally sought. At the same time, according to her report, there were repeated acts of resistance in the camp, which resulted in severe punishment - for example against a young worker who "hung out a red flag [and] (...) something (screamed)". The resistance actions of the group were favored by the bombing of the Fuchs works by the Allies on March 19, 1945, in which two six- and seven-year-old forced laborers were also killed, and the fear of senseless death in war.

According to Peter Faecke, the resistance group was exposed in the last weeks of the Second World War through a denunciation by the block leader Jülich. However, there are also reports from eyewitnesses and contemporaries that it was Meinerzhagen's chief inspector Fritz Sinderhauf who denounced the German workers and the four Soviet forced laborers to Fuchs’s shop steward at the Gestapo, Commissioner Hermann Bolte. On March 29, 1945 (Maundy Thursday), the group was interrogated, probably under torture, in the air raid shelter of the Otto Fuchs works. Kessler cut his wrists during the interrogation. The seriously injured Kessler and the seven other members of the group were then abducted by the Gestapo in a truck. On April 21, 1945, the eight Meinerzhagen resistance fighters were found dead in Bittermark, along with several hundred other Westphalian victims of end-of-war crimes. The hands of the dead were tied behind their backs with barbed wire and - like Kessler - they were shot one or more times in the neck. It is still unclear whether the Lüdenscheid KPD city councilor Alex Uesseler (born May 11, 1900 in Solingen ), who found work again after his imprisonment in the Börgermoor concentration camp in Meinerzhagen and was also murdered in Rombergpark, also belonged to the Meinerzhagen resistance group.

The resistance of this group, together with others, is commemorated with the Bittermark Memorial .

Work-up efforts

After the war, the occupation authorities started investigations against Hermann Bolte, who had supervised the forced labor camps in the Lüdenscheid area (in addition to the Fuchs camp in Meinerzhagen, among others, the Hunswinkel labor education camp ), in particular about the murder of the resistance group and the Soviet female forced laborers went. Today u. a. the International Romberg Park Committee in Dortmund. Bolte was exonerated by Hans Joachim Fuchs . Bolte had "always endeavored (...) to fulfill the tasks assigned to him in a generous and humane manner". Not a single “foreign worker” complained about Bolte. Bolte himself claimed that he was unaware of the Nazis' forced labor program. Regardless of the inhumane conditions documented today in the forced labor camps in the Märkisches Sauerland, he stated that he had only looked after "foreign workers" who were happy to be in the "Reich". Bolte remained interned until 1947, but was able to remain active in the police service until the end of the 1950s after paying a fine. Since then - under the conditions of the Cold War - history has remained silent.

In the second half of the 1990s, local organizations and national historians finally tried to come to terms with the Meinerzhagen resistance group and the forced labor camp, which was located right next to the Otto Fuchs factory near the now-closed train station and in which 850 forced laborers were constantly imprisoned . The regional media Meinerzhagener Zeitung and Westfälische Rundschau took up these efforts in 1995. In the same year, a street sign for the place of the eight victims of March 29, 1945 was erected near the Fuchs works. However, this was soon removed by strangers.

In the context of the debate on the compensation of the surviving forced laborers, the 1999/2000 case went through the regional and national media again. The IG Metall reported in 2000 in its member magazine metal that Otto Fuchs Metallwerke belonged to the circle of those companies that refused to participate in the compensation fund. In this context it was discussed that the members of the Meinerzhagen resistance group had never been compensated by either the Fuchs-Werke or the city of Meinerzhagen. On the initiative of the city archive, which is trying to process it, and the Stolpersteine ​​initiative, a memorial in the Meinerzhagen Jewish cemetery has been commemorating the "people deported to Germany between 1939 and 1945" and the 26 Russian and Polish victims of forced labor buried there. A legal appraisal of the Meinerzhagen resistance group and its end has not yet taken place. Fritz Sinderhauf, who became the city's top civil servant after 1945, died around 1970, Hans Joachim Fuchs in 1992. Ulrich Sander believes that the complete historical reappraisal depends on the willingness of Otto Fuchs Metallwerke to open its archives.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: Article of the VVN-BDA@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.nrw.vvn-bda.de
  2. ↑ Stolpersteine ​​Meinerzhagen: Address at the new monument , May 8, 2014.
  3. ↑ Märkischer Kreis: Documentation on the history of forced labor in the Märkischer Kreis , November 4, 2014.
  4. ↑ Ljuba Leontjewna Meleschko: Report , July 16 of 2004.
  5. ↑ Stolpersteine ​​Meinerzhagen: Commemoration of the victims , May 8, 2014.
  6. ↑ Peter Faecke: Flight into life , p. 231ff. ( on Google Books )
  7. ↑ Ulrich Sander: The media and the slaves ( Memento of the original from April 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , April 14, 2000. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / 194.245.102.185
  8. ^ Peter Faecke: Flug ins Leben , p. 231 ff. ( On Google Books ). Same content in: Ulrich Sander: Mord im Rombergpark , p. 53f.
  9. ^ Armin Schulte: Alex Uesseler. Biographical summary ( memento of the original from April 3, 2015 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. on the occasion of the laying of the Stolperstein in Melanchtonstraße 33 in Solingen. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www2.solingen.de
  10. ↑ Ulrich Sander: A Heimatverein looks after former roommates. Thoughts on Research into Forced Labor in the Province.
  11. ↑ Forced labor: Documentation on the history of forced labor in the Märkischer Kreis , Märkischer Kreis, Kulturamt, Kreisarchiv, Bismarckstr. 15, 58762 Altena; March 2001; Editor: Ulrich Biroth; see. also the report of the forced laborer Ljuba Leontjewna Meleschko, which also reports on resistance actions of the forced laborers, as well as the Meinerzhagen city archive (2001): "... because these are the hardest parts of my life that happened to me at a young age!" Forced laborers report on their time in Meinerzhagen.
  12. ↑ metal , 2/2000
  13. ↑ Stolpersteine ​​Meinerzhagen address at the new monument
  14. ↑ Ulrich Sander: The media and the slaves ( Memento of the original from April 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , April 14, 2000 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / 194.245.102.185