August Landmesser- Defiant against Tyrrany

August Landmesser (born 24 May 1910;^[1] missing and presumed dead 17 October 1944; declared dead in 1949) was a worker at the Blohm + Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany, best known for his appearance in a photograph^[2] refusing to perform the Nazi salute at the launch of the naval training vessel Horst Wessel on 13 June 1936.^[3]

Biography[edit]

August Landmesser was the only child of August Franz Landmesser and Wilhelmine Magdalene (née Schmidtpott). In 1931, hoping it would help him get a job, he joined the Nazi Party. In 1935, when he became engaged to Irma Eckler (a Jewish woman), he was expelled from the party.^[4] They registered to be married in Hamburg, but the Nuremberg Lawsenacted a month later prevented it. On 29 October 1935, Landmesser and Eckler's first daughter Ingrid was born.^[4]

A now-famous photograph, in which a man identified as Landmesser refuses to give the Nazi salute, was taken on 13 June 1936.^[5]

In 1937, Landmesser and Eckler tried to flee to Denmark but were apprehended. She was again pregnant, and he was charged and found guilty in July 1937 of "dishonoring the race" under Nazi racial laws. He argued that neither he nor Eckler knew that she was fully Jewish, and was acquitted on 27 May 1938 for lack of evidence, with the warning that a repeat offense would result in a multi-year prison sentence. The couple publicly continued their relationship, and on 15 July 1938 he was arrested again and sentenced to two and a half years in the concentration camp Börgermoor.

Eckler was detained by the Gestapo and held at the prison Fuhlsbüttel, where she gave birth to a second daughter Irene.^[5]From there she was sent to the Oranienburg concentration camp, the Lichtenburg concentration camp for women, and then the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück. Their children were initially taken to the city orphanage. Ingrid was later allowed to live with her maternal grandmother; Irene went to the home of foster parents in 1941. Later, after her grandmother's death in 1953, Ingrid was also placed with foster parents. A few letters came from Irma Eckler until January 1942. It is believed that she was taken to the so-called Bernburg Euthanasia Centre in February 1942, where she was among the 14,000 killed; in the course of post-war documentation, in 1949 she was pronounced legally dead, with a date of 28 April 1942.

Meanwhile, Landmesser was discharged from prison on 19 January 1941.^[4] He worked as a foreman for the haulagecompany Püst. The company had a branch at the Heinkel-Werke (factory) in Warnemünde.^[6] In February 1944 he was drafted into a penal battalion, the 999th Fort Infantry Battalion. He was declared missing in action, and presumed killed during fighting in Croatia on 17 October 1944. Like Eckler, he was declared legally dead in 1949.

The marriage of August Landmesser and Irma Eckler was recognized retroactively by the Senate of Hamburg in the summer of 1951, and in the autumn of that year Ingrid assumed the surname Landmesser. Irene continued to use the surnameEckler.

Recognition[edit]

In 1996, Irene Eckler published the book Die Vormundschaftsakte 1935–1958 : Verfolgung einer Familie wegen "Rassenschande" (The Guardianship Act 1935–1958: Persecution of a Family for "Dishonoring the Race"). This book about the story of her family includes a large amount of original documents from the time in question, including letters from her mother and documents from state institutions.^[5]

A figure identified as August Landmesser is featured in a photograph taken on 13 June 1936, published on 22 March 1991 in Die Zeit. It shows a large gathering of workers at the Blohm + Voss shipyard in Hamburg, for the launching of the navy training ship Horst Wessel. Everyone in the image has raised his or her arm in the Nazi salute, with the exception of a man toward the back of the crowd, who grimly stands with his arms crossed over his chest. Whether the depicted man is Landmesser is not known with certainty.

References[edit]

1. Jump up^ Eckler, Irene (1996). Die Vormundschaftsakte 1935-1958: Verfolgung einer Familie wegen "Rassenschande": Dokumente und Berichte aus Hamburg. Horneburg. Retrieved 15 January 2014.
2. Jump up^ Straße, Amanda. "Verbotene Liebe | Courage". Fasena.de. 1&1 Internet. Retrieved 15 January 2014.
3. Jump up^ Simone Erpel: Zivilcourage : Schlüsselbild einer unvollendeten „Volksgemeinschaft". In: Gerhard Paul (Hrsg.): Das Jahrhundert der Bilder, Bd. 1: 1900–1949, Göttingen 2009, S. 490–497, ISBN 978-3-89331-949-7
4. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Roux, François. Comprendre Hitler et les allemands. Paris: Max Milo Éditions. ISBN 9782315004614. Retrieved 15 January 2014.
5. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Flock, Elizabeth (7 February 2012). "August Landmesser, shipyard worker in Hamburg, refused to perform Nazi salute (photo)". The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.: Washington Post Media). Retrieved 15 January 2014.
6. Jump up^ Straße, Amanda. "Father reported missing". Fasena.de. 1&1 Internet. Retrieved 15 January 2014.

Irena Sendler: The Woman That Did Not Stand By

Experience teaches that you can't expect to achieve much without becoming active for your cause. It's always possible to expect the "other guy" to do something but when we're prepared to take on the responsibility of going out into the trenches and getting involved, we can expect to see results.

One episode that brings that lesson home involves the recent identification of a Righteous Gentile who had been all but forgotten by her own country as well as by the Jewish community. She lived in anonymity until a group of non-Jewish schoolgirls tenaciously researched her story and brought it to light.

In 1999, for a school assignment, four Uniontown Kansas high school students decided to Life in a Jar, which was turned into a website, a book and a performance which continues to inspire audiences and readers throughout the world. It also led the establishment of the Lowell Milken Center that promotes projects about other unknown heroes.

investigate the story of Irena Sendler. According to a rumor that the girls had heard, Sendler saved over 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto. The girls were able to shed light on the story and ensure that Sendler, who was still alive at the time, would be properly honored. The girls' research turned into a project, called

Irena Sendler was a young Polish social worker when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. She joined the Zagota underground resistance group and assisted numerous Jews who were fleeing the Germans by providing them with false papers and hiding places. Due to her position as an employee of the Warsaw Social Services she was able to obtain a travel pass that allowed her to pass into the Warsaw ghetto where almost half a million Jews were trapped without sufficient food or other necessities.

Sendler envisioned her job as one of smuggling food and medicines into the ghetto but she quickly realized that this was only a drop in the bucket, compared to the needs of the desperate people. Together with her Zagota comrades she devised a plan that would enable her to smuggle children out of the ghetto -- sedating the youngest children and hiding them under garbage on garbage carts, inside toolboxes and luggage and under tram seats and guiding older children out through underground tunnels and through sewers.

At the beginning she brought out street children but as time went by she began to go door to door to try and convince parents to allow her to smuggle their children out of the ghetto. These meetings were traumatic, both for Sendler, who was taking responsibility for someone else's children, and for the parents who were forced to decide whether their children would have a better chance at life if they were taken out of the ghetto without their families.

When the Kansas schoolgirls started their project in 1999 Sendler was still alive and during interviews she described how difficult her mission had been. "I talked the parents out of their children" she remembered. “Those scenes over whether to give a child away were heart-rending. Sometimes, they wouldn’t give me the child. Their first question was, ‘What guarantee is there that the child will live?’ I said, ‘None. I don’t even know if I will get out of the ghetto alive today.”

Following each child's removal from the ghetto the Zagota members would work feverishly to find a place where the child could be hidden. Some children were hidden in convents or orphanages while others were secured with sympathetic Polish families. In many of the cases the children needed false documents and Zagota supplied these papers.

Sendler recorded the names and hiding places of each child on a strip of tissue paper. She placed these pieces of paper in glass jars and buried the jars in her garden, hoping that, after the war, the children could be reunited with family members.

In October 1943, shortly after the Nazis liquidated the ghetto, the Germans arrested Sendler. They brought her to the Piawiak prison and tortured her but Sendler didn't reveal any information about the children, their whereabouts or her Zagota comrades. The Germans sentenced Sendler to death but Zagota was able to bribe a German guard and secure her release. Sendler lived out the remainder of the war in hiding.