Peter Hüppeler

Peter Hüppeler (born January 9, 1913 , † November 10, 1944 in Cologne-Ehrenfeld ) was a German communist resistance fighter against National Socialism as a member of the Ehrenfeld group and a victim of fascism .

Life

Hüppeler was one of the communist-motivated members of the Ehrenfeld group, which also included members of the edelweiss pirates , armed forces deserters , Jews hiding and forced laborers who had run away . When the group was discovered at the end of September and beginning of October 1944, Hüppeler was among those arrested. Together with a total of 13 people, including some young people, he was executed by the Gestapo on Hüttenstrasse by public hanging without a judicial decision . Around 400 people are said to have attended the execution as onlookers.

Long after the Nazi regime was eliminated, the members of the Ehrenfeld group were still considered criminals in the public consciousness because they stole weapons and other material during their sabotage and underground struggle against the Nazi regime and during their arrest in a shooting had killed three people with the Gestapo and the police .

In 1963 members of Hüppeler applied for recognition of Peter Hüppeler as a politically persecuted person and a victim of fascism . The then Cologne District President rejected her application and stated:

"[...] The deceased persecuted person obviously does not meet the eligibility requirements of § 1 BEG. According to this, only those who were persecuted for reasons of political opposition to National Socialism or for reasons of race, belief or ideology were persecuted by National Socialist measures of violence and suffered damage as a result. Even if the witness Heinrich Schneider […] states that the persecuted person was a political opponent of the Nazi regime, it can be concluded from the facts presented that the testator belonged to the 'Ehrenfeld clique' known as the criminal gang. This gang had murdered the local group leader Soentgen, the police inspector Schiefer and the night watchman Klockenberg in Cologne-Ehrenfeld and also committed a number of serious thefts and robberies [...] "

It was not until 1972 that there was a change in the public assessment of what was going on at the time. In 1984, the Israeli Yad Vashem Memorial honored some of the murdered with the nomination as " Righteous Among the Nations ". It took until 1991, when, in another four years, all of the group's survivors were awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.

literature

• Carla Steck (Institution: Ville-Gymnasium, archive number V101974): Edelweiss pirates - resistance fighters or criminals? , ISBN 978-3-640-00374-7 (e-book).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.artikel32.com/wirtschaft/1/die-ehrenfelder-gruppe.php Retrieved August 4, 2011
2. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from March 18, 2013 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. Retrieved August 4, 2011 
3. ↑ http://lehrer.freepage.de/cgi-bin/feets/freepage_ext/41030x030A/rewrite/igsmainspitze/ProWo99-Pages/Projektwoche/9.Schuljahr/Jugendliche.html Retrieved August 4, 2011