Vincent Porombka

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Vinzent Porombka (born January 2, 1910 in Hindenburg , Upper Silesia , † November 28, 1975 in Berlin ) was a German functionary ( KPD / SED ), interbrigadist and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime .

Life

Porombka, son of a miner, worked as a dairy worker in 1925/26, then as a miner from 1926 to 1930. Between 1930 and 1935 he was unemployed or on short-time work. In 1927 he joined the Red Front Fighters League and in 1930 the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD). In 1931 he was sentenced to ten months' imprisonment for violating the peace . In 1933 Porombka joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists, Porombka took part in the resistance struggle of the KPD. It was in March 1933 in custody taken into and in June 1933 KZ Esterwegen transferred (Camp II). After his release in December 1933, he continued his illegal activity and became head of the KPD sub-district of Beuthen in Upper Silesia. He was also an instructor for the Central Committee of the KJVD. In August 1935 he fled to Czechoslovakia , where he worked as a stone worker in Steinau . He did border work for the KPD in Karwin and Mährisch-Ostrau . He was arrested in July 1936, but was able to flee to Germany while being deported and remained illegally in Czechoslovakia for another three months.

From November 1936 Porombka took part in the Spanish Civil War and was a member of the XIII. International Brigade . He became a member of the Spanish Communist Party . During a fight in northern Catalonia in January 1939, he was supposed to reestablish a broken connection with the neighboring battalion. He left an obstructing haversack with his belongings with a comrade who fell shortly afterwards. The Franco soldiers found his Red Aid membership card on the dead man , with a photo and home address: Rokittnitz in Upper Silesia. These papers ended up with the Condor Legion . There someone who also came from Rokittnitz and knew Porombka by sight testified to the Gestapo that the fallen interbrigadist was really the "red Porombka". So he was dead to the German authorities. From February to June 1939 he was interned in France before he was transported to the Soviet Union on a transport of the wounded .

Porombka worked as a lathe operator in the Chelyabinsk tractor factory . In 1942 he was drafted into the labor army. In 1942/43 he was a student at a special school for parachutists near Moscow . On April 27, 1943 he jumped as a radio operator in a group of three - in addition to Porombka these were Otto Heppner and Adolf Kaim - near Insterburg ( East Prussia ). Only Porombka managed to do his job. In May 1943 he was able to secretly see his parents again, for whom he was considered dead. He had to find out that two of his brothers had died. When the Gestapo later found out that he had not died and was not living in Spain, they took his parents to the concentration camp . His father was murdered in Gross-Rosen in 1945 . As a representative of the Central Committee of the KPD, Vinzent Porombka fought his way to Upper Silesia and tried to reorganize the resistance there. To this end, he contacted local KPD members and directed them. With his help it was possible to constantly widen the resistance front and to further expand cooperation with the Polish resistance movement. Particularly good connections existed with a large resistance group in Ruda , which was led by the communist Rudolf Krzyszczyk and which mainly took action against transports of the Wehrmacht . In connection with the arrest of Rudolf Krzyszczyk in the spring of 1944, Porombka also found itself in a very dangerous situation. The Gestapo was looking for him and had circulated a profile of him in the NSDAP branches . Because of the danger posed by the Gestapo, Porombka had to stop radio contacts. Despite his many connections, he was unable to find a safe hiding place. In order not to endanger his comrades, he moved his base to Czechoslovak territory. He buried the transmitter for a while and drove to Moravian-Ostrava via Ratibor in July 1944 . He later returned to Upper Silesia and occasionally resumed radio communications with Moscow. Porombka was one of the few of numerous Soviet parachute agents who survived the mission. At the beginning of January 1945 he contacted the district leadership of the illegal KPD in Hindenburg under the direction of Roman Ligendza . Together with Upper Silesian communists, they organized resistance actions against the Nazi regime. When the Red Army moved into Hindenburg on January 26, 1945 , they were received by the Soviet city commanders and then worked in the new, provisional city administration. Porombka and Ligendza jumped off with a parachute near Chemnitz in March 1945 .

In 1945 he was initially an interpreter in a staff of the Red Army, then until 1946 for the KPD in West Germany. In 1946 he went to the Soviet Zone and became a member of the SED. From May 1946 he worked as a transport attendant or courier in the zone management and from 1950 as an employee in the general department in the central secretariat and in the Central Committee of the SED. In 1970 he resigned from his position at the Central Committee for health reasons.

tomb

Porombkas urn was in the grave conditioning Pergolenweg the memorial of the socialists at the Berlin Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde buried.

Fonts (selection)

  • O wspólnej walce z faszyzmem polskich i niemieckich komunistów na Śląsku Opolskim [On the common struggle of the Polish and German communists against fascism in Opole Silesia]. In: Ruch robotniczy (1973), No. 10, pp. 125-135.
  • Powstanie Komunistycznego Zwiazku Mlodziezy w Rokitnicy w roku 1930 [uprising of the Communist Youth Association in Rokittnitz in 1930]. In: Klasa robotnicza na Slasku . Volume 2. Wyd. Instytutu Slaskiego, Oppeln 1976, pp. 227-240.
  • As a parachutist in illegal use . In: Heinz Voßke (Ed.): Proven in combat. Memories of German comrades of the anti-fascist resistance from 1933 to 1945 . 2. through and exp. Edition Dietz, Berlin 1977, pp. 111-142.
  • With radio in the hinterland ( facts booklet , volume 223). Military publishing house of the GDR, Berlin 1980.

Awards

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Vinzent Porombka: A dead man reappears . In: Hans Maaßen (Ed.): Brigada Internacional is our name of honor ... Experiences of former German fighters in Spain . Volume 2. Military publishing house of the GDR, Berlin 1974, p. 474ff.
  2. ↑ Johannes Tuchel (ed.): The forgotten resistance. On real history and perception of the struggle against the Nazi dictatorship . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2005, p. 123.
  3. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , March 22, 1970, p. 16.
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Schumann: Germany in the Second World War . Volume 5: The collapse of the defensive strategy of Hitler's fascism on all fronts. January to August 1944 . Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1984, p. 308.
  5. ^ Helmut Roewer , Stefan Schäfer, Matthias Uhl: Lexicon of secret services in the 20th century . Herbig, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7766-2317-9 , p. 355.
  6. ↑ Neues Deutschland , February 23, 1958, p. 3.
  7. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , May 8, 1970, p. 1.
personal data
SURNAME Porombka, Vincent
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD / SED), resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH January 2, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Hindenburg
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1975
Place of death Berlin