Wuppertal union processes
The Wuppertal trade union trials were a series of mass trials that were negotiated between 1935 and 1937 before the People's Court (VGH) and the Hamm Higher Regional Court (OLG). Around 800 women and men, members of workers' organizations that were banned in Germany at the time, were charged with “ preparing to commit high treason ”. Many of these women and men had helped set up illegal trade union groups.
After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists in January 1933, the KPD, together with social democrats , non-party members and members of free trade union groups in the Wuppertal area, which was traditionally considered "red", set up internal resistance groups.
From the beginning of 1935 the Gestapo, in cooperation with the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD), succeeded in smashing most of these resistance groups. The arrests of over 1200 - other information even speak of 1900 - women and men from Wuppertal , Velbert , Solingen and Remscheid led to the Wuppertal trade union trials . Through the activities of a committee founded in the Netherlands and the reports of the communist journalist Werner Kowalski , these procedures also became known internationally.
Arrests and interrogations
It all started with the arrests of three leading figures in the illegal groups, Willi Muth , Otto Heyler and Wilhelm Recks , on January 17, 1935 . When interrogating the prisoners, the Gestapo men proceeded with extreme brutality. From January 1935 to December 1936 at least 17 men died as a result of the interrogations or committed suicide ; one of the first victims was Wilhelm Muth. Further arrests were made based on statements about torture and information from informants . Some of those arrested, family members or friends, were briefly arrested in order to put them under pressure. In April 1935, Ernst Bertram's parents and brother were taken into “ protective custody ” for eleven days .
Processes
The public prosecutor's offices brought charges against two thirds of the 1200 or so arrested, usually for “preparation for high treason ”. During the trials, 100 defendants were sometimes on trial at the same time. 700 women and men were convicted, around 80 of them acquitted, and 400 proceedings were dropped before the trial began. Eight percent of the accused were women; the highest sentence against a woman was six years in prison . One of the youngest accused was the 21-year-old Karl Ibach , who was sentenced to eight years in prison and who published his reports from the Kemna concentration camp in Wuppertal after the war .
For the trial against “Bertram u. a. ”came the People's Court from Berlin and met in the Wuppertal Regional Court ; twelve men and one woman were charged. The highest sentence - 15 years - was imposed on Ernst Bertram. Bertram died three years after his conviction in November 1935 at the Brandenburg prison-Gorden to tuberculosis . Most of the proceedings took place before the Hamm Higher Regional Court under the presiding judge Ernst Hermsen , also known as the “small people's court”. Numerous other convicts were deported to a concentration camp after their regular imprisonment and died there or were forced to do military service in criminal battalions from 1942 onwards . One of the reasons for the verdict was that the KPD had developed its illegal activity to a particular extent in the Bergisches Lande, "where the peculiarities of the population and the difficulty of the economic situation created a particularly favorable ground for an industry dependent on the world market".
Around 120 people managed to flee, most of them then stayed illegally in Belgium , France and the Netherlands, where some of them were tracked down by the Germans after the war began. 39 Wuppertal people fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War and around 20 in the resistance movements of their host countries.
In 1944, 23 other communists from Wuppertal who had organized themselves under the leadership of Wilhelm Knöchel , a member of the illegal Reich leadership of the KPD, were sentenced to death and executed , including Willi Seng alongside Knöchel .
The defendants, who survived the Nazi regime and the Second World War , often played a leading role in the reconstruction of the Bergisch cities and the local unions after 1945 .
memory
The Wuppertal trade union processes met with a great response in the international labor movement and are considered a symbol of mass resistance to National Socialism . In 1995, a memorial in memory of the Wuppertal trade union trials by the sculptor Ulle Hees was unveiled at the Wuppertal Regional Court, largely financed by private donations. In the stairwell of the district court building, a “warning window” reminds of “judicial injustice in the time of National Socialism”. November 2005 marked the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the first procedure in the process series. On this occasion, an extensive website on this topic was created, as well as an exhibition.
literature
- Stephan Stracke : The Wuppertal union processes. Trade union resistance and international solidarity (= persecution and resistance in Wuppertal; Vol. 12), De Noantri, Bremen, ISBN 978-3-943643-00-8 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ernst Bertram on solingen.de ( Memento from February 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Tânia Ünlüdağ : “'Ms. Muth is undoubtedly to be regarded as one of the government's greatest enemies of the state.'” In: “Se krieje us nit kaputt”. Faces of the Wuppertal resistance . Edited by of the Wuppertal Resistance Research Group. Essen 1995, ISBN 3-9804014-2-1 , p. 9.
- ↑ denkmal-wuppertal.de
- ↑ denkmal-wuppertal.de