Otto Roth (resistance fighter)

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Otto Roth (born March 20, 1905 in Frankfurt am Main ; † May 9, 1969 ibid) was a German communist resistance fighter against National Socialism , a former prisoner in Buchenwald concentration camp and head of the illegal military organization there , and after 1945 co-founder of the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN) and Secretary of the VVN Presidium.

Life dates

Roth grew up in the family of a tram worker and a maid . He broke off his school education during the First World War and worked in a munitions factory . After the end of the war, he began an apprenticeship as an electrician . In 1918 he joined the Socialist Workers Youth (SAJ) and in 1920 he became a union member . In 1924 he joined the Young Socialists. In 1930 he joined the Kampfbund against Fascism and became a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In 1933 he was imprisoned for several months. From 1939 to 1945 he was interned as a prisoner in Buchenwald concentration camp and assigned to the electricians' command there. Since 1943 he was the head of the illegal defense and military organization that was preparing for the violent liberation.

After the liberation from Nazi rule , Roth returned to Frankfurt and became a member of a joint action committee of the SPD and KPD as well as an anti- fascist committee. As the head of a municipal care center, he looked after the victims of fascism (OdF). In 1946 he was one of the co-founders of the VVN and had been the secretary of the VVN Presidium in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1958 .

records

  • Personal records, p. 106 (owned by G. Kühn and W. Weber)

literature

  • Artur Roth (ed.): Under the eyes of the SS . Otto Roth and the armed resistance in Buchenwald concentration camp , Bonn 1995.
  • Harry Stein, Buchenwald Memorial (ed.): Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945 , volume accompanying the permanent historical exhibition. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 978-3-89244-222-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heinz Koch, Udo Wohlfeld: The German beech forest committee. The period from 1945 to 1958 . Weimar 2010, ISBN 3-935275-14-5 , p. 189.
  2. ^ Editing collective : Buchenwald. Warning and obligation , Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1983, p. 574
personal data
SURNAME Roth, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political concentration camp prisoner, resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH May 9, 1969
Place of death Frankfurt am Main