Wilhelm Vogel (resistance fighter)

Wilhelm Vogel (* December 20, 1898 in Worms ; † April 16, 1989 ibid), also Willy Vogel , was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism. The long-time KPD member managed to escape from the Osthofen concentration camp on April 28, 1933 .

Life

Wilhelm Vogel trained as a machine fitter . In 1930 he became district leader of the KPD in Worms. As an avowed opponent of the National Socialists , he was arrested immediately after the seizure of power and interned in the Osthofen concentration camp . On April 28, 1933, he managed to escape when he was supposed to wash the manager Karl d'Angelo's car . He used an unobserved minute to jump onto a passing train.

He first fled to the Saar area , at that time not yet part of the Third Reich , but under a League of Nations mandate, and continued his anti-fascist work for the KPD there. After the reintegration of the Saar region, he fled to Paris, where he joined the World Committee against War and Fascism around André Malraux and Henri Barbusse . In 1936 he fought for the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War , most recently as a sergeant in an artillery unit. In the spring of 1939 he returned to France, where he was interned several times. In November 1942 he managed to escape from Camp de Gurs . He was picked up in Spain and deported to Morocco .

In 1944 he became a soldier in the British Army, with whom he returned to Worms in 1946. He became a prosecutor in the Arbitration Chamber of the Worms district. When the KPD ordered that its members should no longer be active in the arbitration chamber proceedings, he left his party.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Willy Vogel. Project Osthofen, accessed on June 20, 2013 . 
2. ↑ Susanne Urban-Fahr and Angelika Arenz-Morch: The Osthofen Concentration Camp 1933/34 . Ed .: Förderverein Projekt Osthofen eV Osthofen 2000, p. 28 ( Online (PDF; 196 kB)).