Werner Scharff

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Werner Scharff (born August 16, 1912 in Posen ; † March 16, 1945 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp ) was a German-Jewish resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Since he was unable to study for various reasons, Werner Scharff completed an apprenticeship as an electrical engineer. In 1938 he married Gertrud Weissmann. A planned emigration of the Jewish couple failed. From 1941 Scharff worked as an electrical engineer in the Levetzowstrasse synagogue ( Berlin-Moabit ), which had been used by the SS as a deportation collection point since 1941 . This gave Scharff deep insights into the cruelty of the National Socialists and the bitter fate of the persecuted. He tried as best he could to help by taking messages, food and valuables from the prisoners or smuggling them out of their already sealed apartments and passing them on. Thanks to good contacts with Gestapo officials , he had also gained access to the deportation lists and during this time he had saved numerous friends and acquaintances from the impending arrest by giving them timely warnings.

Deportation and escape

When the community members were also deported in the summer of 1943, Scharff was able to flee underground on June 10, 1943. Six weeks later, on July 14th, he was found by the Gestapo and deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto . However, his stay did not last long, because on September 7th he was able to flee the ghetto together with his girlfriend Fancia Grün (his wife was Gertrud Weismann). Equipped with the address of a possible hiding place that he had received from fellow inmate Günter Samuel, he set off for Berlin . The address was that of Hans Winkler , a judicial clerk and also an opponent of the National Socialists.

Resistance and Execution

Werner Scharff wanted to call for passive resistance with active resistance and had many ideas and plans, but he needed helpers. After Hans Winkler found out about Scharff's plans, he was immediately ready to take part. Even before the outbreak of war, he and Günter Samuel and Erich Schwarz had built up a loose resistance community in Luckenwalde to rescue Jews threatened with deportation. Among other things, Winkler had taken in his Jewish nephew Eugen Herman-Friede . The resistance group later became known under the name " Community for Peace and Construction ", which it had given itself in 1944.

With his position in the district court, Winkler had the opportunity to organize passports and issue death certificates for Jews who he had lodged with himself or his friends. He also had many friends and acquaintances who were willing to offer ration cards and accommodation. Scharff gradually became the head of the organization, which consisted primarily of friends and acquaintances of Scharff and Winkler, opponents of the regime and other like-minded people from Berlin ( Wedding , Mitte and Kreuzberg ); he developed new ideas for chain letters and protest leaflets as they are circulated could bring and gain more followers. Scharff and Winkler organized the large-scale distribution of their leaflets in which they called on the population to think independently, to resist and to end the war. They also housed six to ten persecuted Jews with them at any given time.

Many, especially Ms. Winkler, felt that the organization was acting too carelessly and recklessly. In fact, one member of the group, Hilde Bromberg, was denounced as a result of a denunciation by the wife of the publisher and bookseller August Bonneß Jr., who had been sentenced to death by the People's Court. (1890–1944) arrested in April 1944. After Bromberg's arrest, the Gestapo tracked down the group and arrested Werner Scharff on October 14, 1944. Scharff was taken to the prison on Alexanderplatz and cruelly interrogated. Shortly afterwards, Hans Winkler and many other members of the organization were arrested.

Stumbling block for Werner Scharff

At the end of 1944 Scharff was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp , where he was shot by the SS on March 16, 1945. Fancia Grün was also murdered in the concentration camp. Many members of the community owe their survival exclusively to the end of the war; otherwise they would have been sentenced to death.

Honor

For Werner Scharff was on 20 August 2010 in the Gitschiner Straße 70 in Berlin's Kreuzberg district , a stumbling block laid.

literature

  • Eugen Herman-Friede: No time for jumps of joy: Memories of illegality and rebellion 1942-1948. Metropol, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-926893-11-7 .
  • Hans-Rainer Sandvoss: Resistance in Kreuzberg. German Resistance Memorial Center, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-92082-03-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Werner Scharff on the Stolpersteine project in Berlin
personal data
SURNAME Scharff, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighters against the Nazi regime
DATE OF BIRTH August 16, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Poses
DATE OF DEATH March 16, 1945
Place of death Sachsenhausen concentration camp