Paul Zinke

This article deals with the resistance fighter Paul Zinke. For other people see also Paul Zink .

Stumbling block for Paul Zinke at Falkenried 26 in Hoheluft-Ost .

Paul Erich Zinke (born March 8, 1901 in Warmbrunn ; † April 23, 1945 in Neuengamme concentration camp ) was a German communist resistance fighter against National Socialism and victims of National Socialism .

Life

Paul Zinke came from a working-class family in Lower Silesia . After attending elementary school, he learned to be an electrician . Early on he had made contact with freethinkers , to which he considered himself. Zinke also joined the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ). In 1921 he took part in the March uprisings in central Germany . In 1925 he joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and campaigned against the emergence of National Socialism . He found his further professional activity in Hamburg , where he had worked at the Stülcken shipyard since the early 1930s . After the transfer of power to the NSDAP, he continued to work illegally as an anti-fascist . In July 1935 he was arrested and sentenced by a court to nine months in prison for “preparing for high treason ”.

After his release, he sought contact with the Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen resistance group and formed an “anti-fascist cell” with Ernst Fiering in the Stülcken shipyard, which also included Soviet and Polish prisoners of war and forced laborers . In addition to supporting these so-called " Eastern workers " at the shipyard in their struggle for their survival, the group around Fiering and Zinke took care of setting up a secret radio station with a receiving system for listening to so-called " enemy transmitters " in order to be able to receive trustworthy messages during the war. They also obtained a duplicating machine that they could use to produce forged documents and ration cards for refugees and slave laborers. In January 1943, Zinke moved to the AEG shipbuilding office as an electrician .

Zinces resistance activity was no longer possible since June 28, 1943, because he was drafted into the Wehrmacht . As a political convict he was one of the " unworthy of military service " and was assigned to the 999 probation battalion . These units were used to hold certain bases and to bind enemy troops. Zinke was assigned to a “replacement unit” in Yugoslavia , where he found living conditions somewhat better than in other groups that were starving. At the end of April 1944 he was released from the 999ers, but was shortly thereafter recorded again and pressed to the Organization Todt (OT). In this association, which had to build militarily important buildings, Zinke worked for another seven months until September 1944. He was deployed in Trier and Hamburg , among other places , where he was even able to establish contact with anti-fascists.

In December 1943 the Gestapo succeeded in smuggling Alfons Pannek into the circle of acquaintances around Fiering and Zinke, a spy with whom Zinke also met several times without suspecting any danger when he was released from the OT. Now his illegal activity like that of his wife Margit came to light. On November 27, 1944, he was arrested with Ernst Fiering, his wife Marie Fiering and their sister and interned in the Gestapo prison in Fuhlsbüttel . The Gestapo had even prepared liquidation lists with the names of resistance and opposition members who were to be murdered at the last minute. Paul and Margit Zinke were also on these lists. In the nights from April 21st to April 24th, a total of 71 people were murdered in the crime of the final phase in Neuengamme concentration camp . While Margit Zinke was hanged with the other women , the exact circumstances of Paul Zinke's death are not known. Because the men barricaded themselves, some were shot, others killed by the use of hand grenades and some hanged.

Paul Zinke had been in a relationship with the 52-year-old widow Hermine Marr since 1932 and had a seven-year-old son, Albert Lohrberg, named after his mother's maiden name. On July 1, 1944, he married Margit Fleischner, divorced Speckin. From this marriage a daughter Ursula was born.

Honors

• At their last residential address, Falkenried 26 ( Hamburg-Nord , Hoheluft-Ost ), the action artist Gunter Demnig laid two stumbling blocks for Margit Zinke and Paul Zinke.

literature

• Ursula Puls : The Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen-Gruppe: Report on the anti-fascist resistance struggle in Hamburg and on the waterfront during the Second World War , Dietz Berlin 1959

Web links

• Biogram of Margit Zinke and Paul Zinke Retrieved September 23, 2011

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ursula Puls: Die Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen-Gruppe , Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 1959, p. 222 on Google Books.Retrieved September 23, 2011