Otto Schimek

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Otto Schimek
Schimek's grave in Machowa , Poland

Otto Schimek (born May 5, 1925 in Vienna , † November 14, 1944 in Lipiny ) was an Austrian soldier who is said to have belonged to a firing squad of the Wehrmacht . He was the Nazi regime by firing squad executed , allegedly after he allegedly refused to cooperate in the execution of a Polish family. This made him a symbol of pacifism and the Austrian resistance to National Socialism .

The truthfulness of this story has been vehemently contested, the critics claim that there are no reliable sources for it and that the story was invented by Schimek's sister.

Life

Schimek was the thirteenth and last child of Rudolph and Maria Schimek, nee. Zsambeck, born. The family lived in great poverty, which was exacerbated when the father died in 1932. Otto couldn't go to school regularly because the 7-year-old had to help his mother, a seamstress, earn a living for the numerous siblings. According to his sister Elfrida Kajak, Otto went to mass every Sunday with his mother, but was not particularly religious as a child. He didn't have many friends, but the family's neighborhood on Obere Augartenstrasse respected Otto very much and said goodbye to him when he was drafted into the Wehrmacht at the age of only 17. After that, however, he always carried a cross on his chest.

First he served in Bosnia , later in southern Poland . After the war, his sister reported that Otto told her when he was on leave from the front in 1943 or early 1944 that he did not want to kill anyone and that he had shot over the heads of the enemy. "My conscience is clear," said Otto. “I'm not going to shoot anyone. These people, like me, want to go back home. This war is not Christian. ”This behavior is said to have soon been recognized by the authorities. Schimek was warned and later put in prison. He managed to escape and tried to return to Vienna. Somewhere in the later Czechoslovakia he was seized, arrested and severely beaten, and finally because of desertion before a court martial was made. It is said to have been given one last chance. The Wehrmacht is said to have assigned him to a firing squad. His job is said to have been to shoot a Polish family from the area between Tarnów and Dębica - father, mother and two sons who should have been caught giving food for the Polish Home Army . Otto had refused the order with the declaration that he would not kill innocents in Hitler's war. His superiors reacted immediately; he was immediately sentenced to death for cowardice in front of the enemy and desertion .

Elfrida Kajak later said that when the family's death sentence became known, Otto's mother immediately submitted a petition for clemency in Berlin, where she also mentions that eight of her children had died of illness and starvation. But it was too late. A few hours before his execution, 19-year-old Otto Schimek wrote to his brother:

“I'm in a happy mood. What do we have to lose? Nothing, just our poor life, because they cannot kill our soul. What hope! Today I'm going to heaven where God is waiting for me. May God protect you until one day you will follow me "

- Otto Schimek : Farewell letter to his brother, translated back from English by Christian Michelides

Schimek was executed on the morning of November 14, 1944 in the village of Lipiny, southeast of Tarnów . The exact place of execution is not known. Allegedly, the local population was allowed to recover his body. He is said to have been buried in the Machowa cemetery (a village between Tarnów and Dębica ), where a tombstone commemorates him.

Grave, veneration, appreciation, words of the Pope, criticism

Comrades brought a sketch of the location of the grave and the letter to the family. In May 1970, his sister had saved up the money to travel to Poland and is said to have found the grave of the only German buried there with the help of the pastor and sacristan - who knew nothing about the circumstances of the execution. When the North Rhine-Westphalian Minister of Justice, Josef Neuberge, toured Poland in 1972, he was informed that there were German soldiers who refused to shoot Poles and were executed for it. Then newspapers picked up the story and the case became known in Poland.

Schimek's grave is considered a place of pilgrimage . The grave inscription reads, in Polish and German: “geb. 5.5.1925. He was executed by the Wehrmacht in 1944 because he refused to shoot the Polish population. God welcomed you in his eternal love. ”There are always fresh flowers on the grave, candles are lit in memory of Otto Schimek. In some cases, small Polish or Austrian flags are placed on the grave. The grave visits caused political controversy in the late 1980s, as the anarchic-pacifist organization " Wolność i Pokój " (Freedom and Peace, in short: WiP) tried to announce its declaration of principles on November 17, 1985, the anniversary of Schimek's death . The WiP activists were stopped on the way to the cemetery. Communist forces from Tarnów held 14 activists for several hours. On May 4, 1986, an activist march to mark Shimek's birthday resulted in the arrest of fifty activists. Pope John Paul II also praised the "martyr of charity":

“There are states that are mature enough to accept other forms of military service. In order to underline this aspect, I would like to bring the person very dear to my people to mind: He was Austrian, his name was Otto Schimek, and during the war he was ordered to shoot at the civilian population. He resisted and was killed. His grave remained with this people, and he has earned great fame, that I would like to say: The fame of a servant of God! "

- John Paul II : About Otto Schimek, quoted from P. Lothar Groppe SJ

During his visit to Austria on September 10, 1983, the Pope wanted to bless a plaque for Otto Schimek on the former garrison church and now the Polish national church in Vienna . "At the last minute, so to speak, Pope John Paul II was informed about what the Otto Schimek case was all about."

In 1993 the TV broadcaster Telewizja Polska created a 40-minute documentary program entitled Casus: Otto Schimek . In 2011, the journalist Martin Pollack and the writer Christoph Ransmayr , both Austrians, published a description of their sources, "which counteract this heroic story and make the case appear as a simple desertion." The reviewer Willi Huntemann describes the reappraisal as follows: In the narrow perspective of official canonization, media processing, testimonies and archive sources, the genesis of a legend is made visible as an interest-driven interpretation event and the actual Schimek case as an example. ”In 2013, the Polish magazine Wprost took over the criticisms of the two Austrian authors and described the story as a hero saga second-hand from the sister of the executed soldier.

See also

literature

  • Christoph Ransmayr , Martin Pollack : The saint. Investigations against heroism. In: The wolf hunter. Three Polish duets. S. Fischer, Frankfurt 2011, ISBN 978-3-10-062950-0 .
  • Julian Kapłon, Jan Kasiński, Wincenty Krzyżak: Otto Schimek, a documentation in texts and pictures , 1995.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Christa Karas: "... and bury him like a dog." The story of the Viennese Otto Schimek, who died because he did not want to kill. In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna July 13, 1972, p. 05 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  2. ↑ Maciej Górny: Otto Schimek grave in Machowa. German-Polish Youth Office, accessed on March 12, 2015 (Polish).
  3. ^ Father Lothar Groppe SJ: For the feast of Saint Hedwig , accessed on March 12, 2015.
  4. ↑ Father Lothar Groppe SJ: Otto Schimek is neither a “martyr of conscience” nor a “symbol of reconciliation in Poland” , accessed on March 12, 2015.
  5. ↑ Case: Otto Schimek. filmpolski.pl - Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Filmowa, Telewizyjna i Teatralna im. Leona Schillera w Łodzi, accessed on March 12, 2015 (Polish).
  6. ^ A b Willi Huntemann: Disenchanted Heroes , Literaturkritik.de, March 2012.
  7. ↑ onierz Wermachtu bohaterem, bo nie strzela do Polakw? Naprawd by dezerterem, never broke anything. In: Wprost.pl. Retrieved March 12, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Schimek, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian Wehrmacht soldier and victim of Nazi military justice
DATE OF BIRTH May 5, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH November 14, 1944
Place of death Lipiny , now in Poland