Wilhelm Franz (party official)
Wilhelm Franz , also Willi Franz (born June 1909 in Gautzsch , Markkleeberg ; † October 17, 1933 in Dachau concentration camp ), was a German businessman and political functionary (KPD) in Munich.
Live and act
After attending school, Franz lived as a businessman in Munich . Politically, he belonged to the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), for which he took on tasks as sales manager for publications of the Munich KPD.
On May 25, 1933, Franz was taken into protective custody in Munich and shortly thereafter sent to the Dachau concentration camp. One of his fellow prisoners there was the writer Alfred Andersch , who in his autobiographical book Die Kirschen der Freiheit (The Cherries of Freedom) reports on playing chess with Franz in front of their prisoner barracks and describes him as: "The long, bony, iron-hard Willi Franz, famous mountaineer [...]."
In the summer of 1933, Franz was locked in the arrest wing known as the bunker in Dachau after he and his fellow inmates Johann Altmann , Delwin Katz and Albert Rosenfelder were caught trying to get cashiers with records of the events in the camp and especially of the mistreatment of Smuggling prisoners sewn into hats from the camp. Franz and Katz were killed in the bunker on October 17 and 18, 1933 by members of the Dachau guard. The deaths were officially declared as suicides .
However, during their investigation in November 1933, the public prosecutor's office came to the conclusion that suicide was practically impossible:
“The opening of the corpses revealed justified suspicions of violence by someone else's hand in both bodies. According to the preliminary opinion of both forensic doctors, […] stands in both cases. Suffocation by strangulation and strangulation. The course of the strangulation marks found on the neck does not correspond to the findings observed in the hanged man. [...] On this corpse, fresh welts were found on the hairy head as well as particularly numerous on the trunk and arms with extensive bleeding and fragmentation of the fatty tissue. "
At the instigation of Heinrich Himmler and Ernst Röhm , the proceedings against the SS men involved in the murders were finally put down for "political reasons".
When the concentration camp commandant of Dachau, Theodor Eicke , had two thousand five hundred prisoners line up on October 22, 1933 to give a speech in which he talked about the "villains" who spread "horror news" about his camp abroad he also explicitly mentioned Altmann, Katz, Franz and Rosenfelder and their "attempt at sabotage". He stated that the four evildoers had been arrested for their act and further stated:
“Two of the traitors arrested have already been promoted to the afterlife. The Jew Doctor Katz and his helper Willi Franz. We still have enough German oaks to hang anyone who opposes us. There are no atrocities and there is no Cheka cellar in Dachau. Anyone who is beaten is right to receive it. "
literature
- Klaus Drobisch , Günther Wieland : System of Nazi concentration camps. 1933-1939. Berlin 1993.
- Christa Muths : The (un) forgotten resistance. The heroes of everyday life. Daily survival in the anti-fascist resistance Hamburg 2014, pp. 422–470. ISBN 978-3-7323-1917-6
- Hans-Günter Richardi : School of violence. The Dachau concentration camp 1933–1945. Munich 1983. ISBN 3-492-12057-1
- Eugen Kogon : The SS state . Berlin 1947. ISBN 978-3-86820-037-9
Individual evidence
- ↑ Alfred Andersch: The cherries of freedom. 1992, p. 43.
- ^ Richardi: School of violence. 1983, p. 210.
- ↑ The world stage. Volume 30, issues 27-52, p. 1347.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Franz, Wilhelm |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Franz, Willi |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German businessman, communist and concentration camp prisoner |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 1909 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Gautzsch |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 17, 1933 |
| Place of death | Dachau concentration camp |