Otto Heller (writer)

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Otto Heller (born December 14, 1897 in Brno ; † March 24, 1945 in Ebensee concentration camp ) alias Raymond Brunet and Rudolf Kern was an Austrian writer, journalist and resistance fighter against National Socialism.

Life

Heller was a frontline officer in the First World War and from 1919 to 1920 secretary of the Austrian National Education Office in the People's Army Battalion. In 1921 he was a founding member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KPČ) in Reichenberg and from 1921 to 1923 editor at Reichenberger Vorwärts . In 1926 he was expelled from the ČSR and moved to Berlin . There he wrote for the newspapers Welt am Abend , Berlin am Morgen and Die Rote Fahne and taught at the “ Marxist Workers School ” (MASCH). In a publication from 1931 he explains the dissolution of Judaism under socialism. Other books describe the socialist construction in the Soviet Union .

exile

1933 emigrated Heller via Czechoslovakia to Switzerland and wrote for the International Newsletter ( Inprecorr ). Between 1934 and 1936 he was the foreign policy editor of the Deutsche Zentral-Zeitung in Moscow , the organ of the German section of the Communist International .

In 1936 he moved to Paris. He kept in contact with the KPÖ leadership, who had exiled in 1938, met Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and Elisabeth Freundlich in the emigre scene and worked in the Comintern's Spanish apparatus . After the occupation of France, he stayed in Vichy-France , was arrested in April 1941 and charged with treason in Montauban with other Austrian resistance fighters . Due to the activities of the AVÖS ( Foreign Representation of Austrian Socialists ) and with the help of Léon Blum, the city was an Austrian center of exile. Despite acquittal, he was interned in the Le Vernet and Les Milles camps. Heller was able to escape and was smuggled into the German Wehrmacht as an interpreter by the Resistance .

concentration camp

Heller was on 23 December 1943 by the Gestapo arrested and subsequently to Auschwitz deported . Together with the Hungarian communist Arpad Haasz , he wrote articles in the “editorial committee” of a communist resistance group led by Bruno Baum , which were broadcast twice a week to London from June 1944 from the camp and from Krakow via shortwave . The news had a major impact on the Allies' image of Auschwitz .

On January 18, 1945, as part of the evacuation of Auschwitz concentration camp , Heller was transferred to Mauthausen concentration camp , where he was given the prisoner number 119,829. Heller died of exhaustion in the Ebensee subcamp .

Fonts (selection)

  • Siberia : Another America. New German publishing house, Berlin 1930.
  • The fall of Judaism: the Jewish question, its criticism, its solution through socialism. Publishing house for literature and politics, Vienna, Berlin 1931.
    • Review by Eva Reichmann-Jungmann : “Der Untergang des Judentums”, in Zs. “Der Morgen”, Vol. 8, No. 1, Berlin April 1932, pp. 64–72 online
  • Wladi Vostok : The struggle in the Far East. New German publishing house, Berlin 1932.
  • The secret of Manchuria . Hoym, Hamburg, Berlin 1932.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated May 13, 2007 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kfunigraz.ac.at
  2. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from November 25, 2003 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dickinson.edu
  3. ^ Freundlich, Elisabeth: The traveling years. - Riverside, Cal. : Ariadne Press, 1999
  4. ↑ Austria's emigrants in Montauban (TAZblog from February 15, 2007)
  5. ^ Baum, Bruno: Resistance in Auschwitz . VVN publishing house. 1949
  6. ↑ bimonthly. Editor Julius Goldstein ; Editors: Max Dienemann , Margarete Goldstein, Eva Reichmann-Jungmann, Hans Bach . The Zs. Appeared from 1925 to issue 4, 1938
personal data
SURNAME Heller, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brunet, Raymond; Kern, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer, journalist and resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH December 14, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Brno
DATE OF DEATH March 24, 1945
Place of death Ebensee