Ottomar Rothmann
Ottomar Rothmann (* 6. December 1921 in Magdeburg , † 14. December 2018 in Weimar ) one was German trade merchant , a Communist , a political prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camp , after 1945 Executive Director , Operations Manager, director of a trading company, and from 1974 to 1986 head of the educational Department in the Buchenwald National Reminder and Memorial Site (NMG). Even in his retirement, he volunteered to guide groups of visitors through the memorial.
Live and act
Weimar Republic
Rothmann was born in Magdeburg as the eighth child of Alma and Berthold Rothmann. His mother was a housewife, his father an employee. As a Social Democrat and member of the Reich Banner “Black Red Gold” , the father had a strong influence on the political upbringing of the children. Ottomars sister Paula - at the same time the oldest of the siblings - joined the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ) at an early age, as did his brothers Kurt and Horst . He himself joined the social democratic children's organization .
When the parents separated, the mother and the children had to live on poor welfare benefits . Hunger and hardship shaped their everyday lives. But Ottomar was considered a good student.
During the Nazi regime
After the seizure of power in 1933, more and more students joined the Jungvolk and the Hitler Youth , but Ottomar Rothmann did not. Therefore, on all possible occasions, he was made to feel that he did not belong. In 1936 he finished school. He was unable to realize his wish to become a car mechanic , so he began an apprenticeship as a retail and wholesale clerk at a company in Magdeburg. The business was in a working-class neighborhood, and so he met many customers who were in the same social situation as his family.
With the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship , serious changes took place in the rest of the family. His brother Waldfried was arrested in 1933 and sent to an SA camp in Wolzig , Beeskow district , where he was detained until 1934. The other brother Kurt was sentenced to two years in prison in 1935. In 1936, when Waldfried was supposed to be arrested again by the Gestapo , but went into hiding, they took his mother into kin custody . In 1942 Ottomar Rothmann began to write notes with a children's stamp box and to stick them to house doors and fences while it was darkened. On these pieces of paper he urged people to turn against Hitler and his war.
On January 30, 1943, Rothmann was arrested and taken to the Magdeburg police prison. After about ten weeks of custody, he was transferred to the Magdeburg court prison as a remand prisoner, where he had to stay until the summer of 1943. When he was released, the Gestapo immediately took him into “temporary protective custody ”. He was also forced to sign the protective custody order. On it was the reason for his new arrest, "Suspicion of preparation for high treason and endangerment of public security".
The delivery to a concentration camp now followed. Via Halle we took the train to Weimar . Upon arrival at the platform, those arriving were verbally abused and spat at by passers-by. On July 29, 1943, he was brought to Ettersberg together with about twenty-five companions in suffering .
The block elder in his block was the communist Theo Eul , a miner from the Ruhr area . The Eisenach communist Otto Storch was used as a block scribe. Otto Storch impressed Ottomar Rothmann and helped him to understand the structure of life and behavior in the camp and to adapt to it. Because Ottomar turned out to be reliable, he was employed as a room clerk and block clerk. Otto Storch had meanwhile become block elder. In his important role, Rothmann had to register the new arrivals, issue prisoner numbers and corresponding " angles ", move prisoners to other blocks or to the prisoner infirmary, and take care of incoming and outgoing mail.
Through his work, Ottomar Rothmann inevitably gained insight into actions of the illegal camp resistance, without being informed about details of the organizational structure and the communists at the top. This was in accordance with the rules of conspiracy and was done for his own safety when he began to use his prison function for the benefit of his comrades. In the event of treason, the SS would not have been able to beat names or facts out of him.
He also devised ways that the prisoners in his block and those in the satellite camps, especially Germans, Austrians , French , Luxembourgers , Belgians , Dutch , Danes , Norwegians , Czechs and Slovaks , actually received their mail, which often contained photos . He smuggled food from the troop kitchen into the camp and used his opportunities to protect weak and sick comrades from being transported to extermination squads or to Auschwitz . He was involved in the rescue of three threatened members of the British Secret Service (SOE). He took part in illegal solidarity campaigns for Soviet women and for the children of Buchenwald. When Otto Storch trusted him in January 1945 on behalf of the illegal leadership of the Communist Party , he was accepted as a member.
A few days before the camp was liberated, on April 4, 1945, Rothmann helped to save Hungarian and Polish Jewish prisoners from murder by changing the registration.
On April 6, 1945, there was the first publicly organized resistance to measures by the SS. In the morning, forty-six names of prisoners were announced, of whom the camp administration suspected to be at the head of the illegal resistance organization. You should be murdered at the last minute. Some of them saw the danger as soon as they read the names. After being informed of this, the International Camp Committee decided to step out of illegality and place and hide the prisoners under the protection of the prisoners of the camp. All forty-six were saved. Until April 11, the SS drove thousands of prisoners out of the camp every day. Although the International Camp Committee did everything possible to delay the evacuations in anticipation of the American liberators, it could not prevent about thirty thousand more prisoners from leaving the camp and from countless death marches from being sent and dying.
SBZ and GDR
On April 11, 1945, an international camp committee took power after the SS withdrew and numerous guards were arrested by armed prisoners. On the same day, active political activity began in the liberated camp that extended far beyond the camp's borders. Ottomar Rothmann began to work in the "Thuringia Committee", which was headed by the communist Walter Wolf . It was located first in the Buchenwald camp, then in Weimar. It had been approved by the Americans under the name "Anti-Nazi Committee". In addition to former Buchenwald members, it included some communists who were not prisoners, such as Hugo Günther and Liesel Martin . The task of the committee was to organize the reorganization of the collapsed civil life in Thuringia. They released National Socialists and other burdened people from the offices and administrations.
From May 1945 Rothmann lived in Weimar. Together with other comrades of the "Anti-Nazi Committee" he dissolved the municipal councils in Berlstedt , Neumark , Vippachedelhausen and Markvippach, which were mostly occupied by National Socialists . At the end of July, he received the order from his former fellow inmate Erich Reschke , who was police chief of Thuringia at the time, and the state criminal director Hermann Geisler to set up a new criminal police in Weimar together with others, almost exclusively from Buchenwald .
On October 1, 1946, Rothmann moved to the State Office for Agriculture and Forestry . As head of the command post he was responsible for the timely fulfillment of the orders of the Soviet military administration on behalf of the agricultural director, his former inmate comrade Otto Storch . Later he became personal assistant to the Ministerialdirektor Wiese and most recently personnel officer for the agriculture sector of the state of Thuringia.
After he became a member of the SED, his party commissioned him in May 1948 to temporarily head the Brüheim state estate in the Gotha district . Although Rothmann did not have any professional prerequisites for animal breeding and complicated situations occurred several times in the stables, he carried out this work in Brüheim until he took up the job of a qualified administrator in the early summer of 1948.
On November 1, 1951, the Interior Minister of the State of Thuringia, Willy Gebhardt , also a former Buchenwald prisoner, appointed him for a temporary position as head of the Ministry of Justice . He held this position from January to March 1952, when he became head of personnel at the Deutsche Zentralbank , Landeszentrale Thuringia, in Weimar. In August 1953, the economics department of the district leadership of the SED in Erfurt offered him to take over the German food trade center in Erfurt as director. That corresponded more to his actual professional qualification than any of the previous tasks. In the fall of 1960 he became a member of the board of the "Production" department in the consumer cooperative association of the Erfurt district , which he remained until 1974.
In November 1974, the director of the National Memorial and Memorial, his fellow prisoner from Buchenwald, Klaus Trostorff , asked him to take over the management of the educational department that was being developed. He built up the department by the time he retired in December 1986. This included guided tours by domestic youth groups as well as by foreign guests, the number of which rose sharply in these years. From 1979 on, Rothmann worked with groups of the “ Action Reconciliation Service for Peace ”.
Federal Republic of Germany
Even after his retirement , Ottomar Rothmann remained connected to the memorial. As a member of the inmate advisory board of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, he participated in their work. He often appeared in interviews with young people. He was a member of the party Die Linke and the district committee of the VVN-BdA Weimar .
Ottomar Rothmann was married to Christel since 1947. He and her had two sons.
Honors
- Medal for excellent performance by the GDR on May 1, 1951
- Patriotic Order of Merit of the GDR in Gold 1986
- Honorary citizen of the city of Weimar since October 3, 2011
Publications
- Buchenwald, I can't forget you. Eighteen former prisoners of Buchenwald concentration camp, including Ottomar Rothmann, provide information. Series: Texts of the RLS, Vol. 35, ISBN 978-3-320-02100-9
Web links
- Listening quote 3 (1'37 ″): Liberation. The former prisoner and later deputy head of the Buchenwald memorial, Ottomar Rothmann, describes how he experienced the self-liberation of the concentration camp.
- Ottomar Rothmann received the honorary citizenship of the city of Weimar at www.buchenwald.de (accessed on January 3, 2018).
Individual evidence
- ^ Mourning for Otto Rothmann. In: Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation. Retrieved December 17, 2018 .
- ↑ http://www.buchenwald.de/index.php?p=stiftungsgremien
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from May 13, 2011 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.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rothmann, Ottomar |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German communist resistance fighter and memorial educator |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 6, 1921 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Magdeburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 14, 2018 |
| Place of death | Weimar |