Wilhelm Hammann
Encyclopedia
Willhelm Hammann was a German educator and communist
politician. A town councilor and a member of the provincial parliament of Hesse
in the 1920s, he was imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp
from 1938 to 1945. In April 1945, Hammann, who was the blockälteste of the children's barrack, sabotage
d the planned movement of Jews
on a death march
to a certain extermination. Yad Vashem awarded Hammann the title of "Righteous among the Nations
". Yisrael Meir Lau
, current chairman (as of May 2010) of Yad Vashem
Council, was one of the children saved by Hammann.
In 1946, the American authorities questioned Hammann's real role as a privileged prisoner, accused him of active collaboration with the SS
and imprisoned him at Dachau concentration camp. Hammann was acquitted by the Buchenwald Trial in May 1947. He became a hero in East Germany posthumously when propagandists elevated the antifascist resistance in Buchenwald
to the level of a foundational myth of the DDR. Attempts to honour his name in the united Germany failed due to his commitment to communism.
(1907-1913) and a free teachers' college in Alzey
. In 1916 he was drafted into German army, and served in Belgium
and Russia
. At the time of the Armistice of November 1918 he attended a military pilots' school in Halle
, where he engaged in Communist actions and enrolled in the Communist Party of Germany
. In 1920 he passed teaching exams and in 1922 became a teacher in Wixhausen
.
Hammann was elected to the town council in 1928 and to the landtag
of Hesse
in 1927. In 1930 he was banned from teaching and imprisoned for one month after opposing police suppression of a strike at Opel
plant in Rüsselsheim
. In 1932 he was convicted for a second time, but the sentence was suspended, perhaps as a precaution against the buildup of Nazi influence. He spent most of 1933 behind bars, and in 1935 was sentenced to three years. On August 27, 1938 he was "released" to Buchenwald concentration camp
.
Buchenwald of 1938 contained around 8,000 inmates, including 2,000 political prisoners. It was a prime example of the "indirect rule system" practiced by the SS, where ethnic German prisoners (political "reds" and criminal "greens") reigned over the "inferior" races
. Communists, in particular, occupied strategic positions in the "indirect rule system" since the start. A clash between red and green factions in 1942 brought the Communists to the top of the prison hierarchy. After the coup of 1942, Hammann obtained a clerical job in the camp's record keeping. At the end of 1944, he was appointed Blockleiter of the camp's Block 8 which housed children and youths under the age of 20. Block 8 was not intended to house Jews
at all, but the communists, who controlled the camp's records, moved some of Jewish children from the overcrowded Small Camp to Block 8. By April 11, 1945 Block 8 housed 159 Jewish children of a total of 329 prisoners. The youngest, presented as a Pole
, was only three years old, another three-year old Jewish child was born in Buchenwald and raised secretly by the prisoners.
When the privileged "red" prisoners heard rumours of the upcoming evacuation of Jews, they sabotaged preparations for the death march. According to Yad Vashem
, "Wilhelm Hammann who was the head of Barrack 8 where the children were held, among them Rabbi Lau
, and who had the children replace the patches identifying them as Jews". Among these children was Yisrael Meir Lau
, chairman of Yad Vashem Council since November 2008. His brother Naphtali Lau-Lavie was stationed in a different barrack and escaped Buchenwald on April 8, 1945.
Hammann himself did not ever speak about these events, and none of the witnesses spoke about him until his death. He was by no means the sole saviour of the Buchenwald Jews: the separation of children under the tutelage of a prisoner-teacher was influenced by Erich Reschke in summer 1943 and continued by Franz Leitner, both communists. Soviet, Czech and Polish prisoners looked after the children. According to William Niven, "perhaps the greatest of all communist achievements for the children was the setting up of children's block, 'Block 8'."
Hammann was freed in April 1945 and was briefly employed as a municipal administrator. In December 1945, he was arrested and held for three months by the American authorities for "letting his work [be] influenced by his political beliefs". According to American reports and West German Social Democrats
, Hammann illegally staffed his office with fellow Communists. Yad Vashem Lexicon of the Righteous calls the American charges false. According to West German Communists, Hammann was arrested after exposing the employment of former Nazis at Opel
. In March 1946, he was arrested for collaborating with the SS in Buchenwald. Letters of support by Emil Carlebach
and fellow Buchenwald survivors did not impress the prosecution and Hammann was imprisoned at Dachau for a whole year. Hammann stood the Buchenwald Trial and was acquitted and released in May 1947.
Hammann returned to politics without much success or publicity. In 1955, at the peak of an anti-communist campaign, he was killed in a traffic accident when his car ran into a parked American tank. According to contemporary West German press, he was "entangled in the heavy traffic of American vehicles that were involved in war games" and the papers found in his car "were analyzed" by German and American police and intelligence services.
(August 18, 1944), the "uprising" (April 11, 1945) and the survival of Stefan Jerzy Zweig
, the child of Buchenwald. The story of Zweig was publicized in 1958 in Naked Among the Wolves, a novel by Bruno Apitz
(himself a survivor of Buchenwald) that became a cornerstone of East Germany's myth of anti-Nazi resistance in Buchenwald. It did not mention Hammann, but his ordeal fitted the propaganda model, and in 1959, Hammann's life story was serialized in East German press. Hammann, like fellow communist prisoners, was presented as a larger-than-life hero of resistance. Independent research by Yad Vashem
in 1982 attested to Hammann's "pivotal role" in saving the Jewish children without the "theatrical flourish" of East German propaganda. On July 16, 1984, Yad Vashem declared Hammann Righteous among the Nations
.
This decision started a public debate over Hammann's real persona between those West Germans who felt that Hammann deserved better recognition and those who disputed it. A 1996 school essay contest sponsored by the Jewish congregation of Groß-Gerau
summarized the problem: "Whether or not a Communist could be a role model for young people in the united Germany?". The reunification of Germany reinforced the position of those who said no. The school in Erfurt
named after Hammann was stripped of his name and the whole pantheon of resistance heroes hailed in the former East Germany suffered a "comprehensive overhaul". Hammann was unsuitable for two reasons: he was a committed Communist and he was officially honoured by the dreaded East German regime. The Communists, Yad Vashem and the Jewish congregation of Erfurt objected, and in November 1993, the city of Erfurt named another school after Hammann. People of Hammann's home town, Biebesheim, denied Hammann the honour.
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
politician. A town councilor and a member of the provincial parliament of Hesse
Hesse
Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...
in the 1920s, he was imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...
from 1938 to 1945. In April 1945, Hammann, who was the blockälteste of the children's barrack, sabotage
Sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
d the planned movement of Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
on a death march
Death marches (Holocaust)
The death marches refer to the forcible movement between Autumn 1944 and late April 1945 by Nazi Germany of thousands of prisoners from German concentration camps near the war front to camps inside Germany.-General:...
to a certain extermination. Yad Vashem awarded Hammann the title of "Righteous among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous among the Nations of the world's nations"), also translated as Righteous Gentiles is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis....
". Yisrael Meir Lau
Yisrael Meir Lau
Yisrael Meir Lau is the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Israel, and Chairman of Yad Vashem. He previously served as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1993 to 2003.-Biography:...
, current chairman (as of May 2010) of Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
Council, was one of the children saved by Hammann.
In 1946, the American authorities questioned Hammann's real role as a privileged prisoner, accused him of active collaboration with the SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
and imprisoned him at Dachau concentration camp. Hammann was acquitted by the Buchenwald Trial in May 1947. He became a hero in East Germany posthumously when propagandists elevated the antifascist resistance in Buchenwald
Buchenwald Resistance
The Buchenwald Resistance was a resistance group of prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp. It involved Communists, Social Democrats, and people affiliated with other political parties, unaffiliated people, and Christians. Because Buchenwald prisoners came from a number of countries, the...
to the level of a foundational myth of the DDR. Attempts to honour his name in the united Germany failed due to his commitment to communism.
Biography
Hammann was born in a family of a railroad worker and a midwife, the first of nine children. He grew up in a working-class town and attended a school in GernsheimGernsheim
Gernsheim is a town in Groß-Gerau district and Darmstadt region in Hesse, Germany, lying on the Rhine.-Location:The Schöfferstadt Gernsheim, as Gernsheim may officially call itself – it was Peter Schöffer's birthplace – lies 18 km southwest of Darmstadt and 16 km northeast of Worms, right...
(1907-1913) and a free teachers' college in Alzey
Alzey
Alzey is a Verband-free town – one belonging to no Verbandsgemeinde – in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is the fourth-largest town in Rhenish Hesse, after Mainz, Worms, and Bingen....
. In 1916 he was drafted into German army, and served in Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
and Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. At the time of the Armistice of November 1918 he attended a military pilots' school in Halle
Halle, Saxony-Anhalt
Halle is the largest city in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is also called Halle an der Saale in order to distinguish it from the town of Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia...
, where he engaged in Communist actions and enrolled in the Communist Party of Germany
Communist Party of Germany
The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...
. In 1920 he passed teaching exams and in 1922 became a teacher in Wixhausen
Wixhausen
Wixhausen is a village in southern Hesse, Germany. Covering an area of 23.247 km², in 2006 it had 5,772 inhabitants and 1,310 houses. It is considered the northernmost suburb of the district-free city of Darmstadt. Its main claim to fame is the GSI heavy-ion research laboratory located...
.
Hammann was elected to the town council in 1928 and to the landtag
Landtag
A Landtag is a representative assembly or parliament in German-speaking countries with some legislative authority.- Name :...
of Hesse
Hesse
Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...
in 1927. In 1930 he was banned from teaching and imprisoned for one month after opposing police suppression of a strike at Opel
Opel
Adam Opel AG, generally shortened to Opel, is a German automobile company founded by Adam Opel in 1862. Opel has been building automobiles since 1899, and became an Aktiengesellschaft in 1929...
plant in Rüsselsheim
Rüsselsheim
Rüsselsheim is the largest town in the Groß-Gerau district in the Rhein-Main region of Germany. It is one of seven special status towns in Hesse and is located on the Main, only a few kilometres from its mouth in Mainz. The suburbs of Bauschheim and Königstädten are included in Rüsselsheim...
. In 1932 he was convicted for a second time, but the sentence was suspended, perhaps as a precaution against the buildup of Nazi influence. He spent most of 1933 behind bars, and in 1935 was sentenced to three years. On August 27, 1938 he was "released" to Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...
.
Buchenwald of 1938 contained around 8,000 inmates, including 2,000 political prisoners. It was a prime example of the "indirect rule system" practiced by the SS, where ethnic German prisoners (political "reds" and criminal "greens") reigned over the "inferior" races
Racial policy of Nazi Germany
The racial policy of Nazi Germany was a set of policies and laws implemented by Nazi Germany, asserting the superiority of the "Aryan race", and based on a specific racist doctrine which claimed scientific legitimacy...
. Communists, in particular, occupied strategic positions in the "indirect rule system" since the start. A clash between red and green factions in 1942 brought the Communists to the top of the prison hierarchy. After the coup of 1942, Hammann obtained a clerical job in the camp's record keeping. At the end of 1944, he was appointed Blockleiter of the camp's Block 8 which housed children and youths under the age of 20. Block 8 was not intended to house Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
at all, but the communists, who controlled the camp's records, moved some of Jewish children from the overcrowded Small Camp to Block 8. By April 11, 1945 Block 8 housed 159 Jewish children of a total of 329 prisoners. The youngest, presented as a Pole
Poles
thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...
, was only three years old, another three-year old Jewish child was born in Buchenwald and raised secretly by the prisoners.
When the privileged "red" prisoners heard rumours of the upcoming evacuation of Jews, they sabotaged preparations for the death march. According to Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
, "Wilhelm Hammann who was the head of Barrack 8 where the children were held, among them Rabbi Lau
Yisrael Meir Lau
Yisrael Meir Lau is the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Israel, and Chairman of Yad Vashem. He previously served as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1993 to 2003.-Biography:...
, and who had the children replace the patches identifying them as Jews". Among these children was Yisrael Meir Lau
Yisrael Meir Lau
Yisrael Meir Lau is the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Israel, and Chairman of Yad Vashem. He previously served as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1993 to 2003.-Biography:...
, chairman of Yad Vashem Council since November 2008. His brother Naphtali Lau-Lavie was stationed in a different barrack and escaped Buchenwald on April 8, 1945.
Hammann himself did not ever speak about these events, and none of the witnesses spoke about him until his death. He was by no means the sole saviour of the Buchenwald Jews: the separation of children under the tutelage of a prisoner-teacher was influenced by Erich Reschke in summer 1943 and continued by Franz Leitner, both communists. Soviet, Czech and Polish prisoners looked after the children. According to William Niven, "perhaps the greatest of all communist achievements for the children was the setting up of children's block, 'Block 8'."
Hammann was freed in April 1945 and was briefly employed as a municipal administrator. In December 1945, he was arrested and held for three months by the American authorities for "letting his work [be] influenced by his political beliefs". According to American reports and West German Social Democrats
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
, Hammann illegally staffed his office with fellow Communists. Yad Vashem Lexicon of the Righteous calls the American charges false. According to West German Communists, Hammann was arrested after exposing the employment of former Nazis at Opel
Opel
Adam Opel AG, generally shortened to Opel, is a German automobile company founded by Adam Opel in 1862. Opel has been building automobiles since 1899, and became an Aktiengesellschaft in 1929...
. In March 1946, he was arrested for collaborating with the SS in Buchenwald. Letters of support by Emil Carlebach
Emil Carlebach
Emil Carlebach was a Hessian Landtag member, a writer, and a journalist. He was born and died in Frankfurt am Main.-Life:...
and fellow Buchenwald survivors did not impress the prosecution and Hammann was imprisoned at Dachau for a whole year. Hammann stood the Buchenwald Trial and was acquitted and released in May 1947.
Hammann returned to politics without much success or publicity. In 1955, at the peak of an anti-communist campaign, he was killed in a traffic accident when his car ran into a parked American tank. According to contemporary West German press, he was "entangled in the heavy traffic of American vehicles that were involved in war games" and the papers found in his car "were analyzed" by German and American police and intelligence services.
Posthumous debate
Between 1955 and 1958, "the collective memory of Buchenwald's communist prisoners" was forged into the official history of East Germany. The East German doctrine rested on three "pivotal" events - the death of Ernst ThälmannErnst Thälmann
Ernst Thälmann was the leader of the Communist Party of Germany during much of the Weimar Republic. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1933 and held in solitary confinement for eleven years, before being shot in Buchenwald on Adolf Hitler's orders in 1944...
(August 18, 1944), the "uprising" (April 11, 1945) and the survival of Stefan Jerzy Zweig
Stefan Jerzy Zweig
Stefan Jerzy Zweig is an author and cameraman and is known as the Buchenwald child from the novel by Bruno Apitz, Naked Among Wolves. He survived Buchenwald concentration camp at age four by being protected by his father and other prisoners.- Early years :Stefan Jerzy Zweig lived with his parents,...
, the child of Buchenwald. The story of Zweig was publicized in 1958 in Naked Among the Wolves, a novel by Bruno Apitz
Bruno Apitz
Bruno Apitz was a German writer.Apitz was born in Leipzig as the twelfth child of a washer woman. He attended school until he was fourteen, then started training as a printer. During World War I he was a passionate supporter of German Communist Party leader Karl Liebknecht...
(himself a survivor of Buchenwald) that became a cornerstone of East Germany's myth of anti-Nazi resistance in Buchenwald. It did not mention Hammann, but his ordeal fitted the propaganda model, and in 1959, Hammann's life story was serialized in East German press. Hammann, like fellow communist prisoners, was presented as a larger-than-life hero of resistance. Independent research by Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
in 1982 attested to Hammann's "pivotal role" in saving the Jewish children without the "theatrical flourish" of East German propaganda. On July 16, 1984, Yad Vashem declared Hammann Righteous among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous among the Nations of the world's nations"), also translated as Righteous Gentiles is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis....
.
This decision started a public debate over Hammann's real persona between those West Germans who felt that Hammann deserved better recognition and those who disputed it. A 1996 school essay contest sponsored by the Jewish congregation of Groß-Gerau
Groß-Gerau
Groß-Gerau is the district seat of the Groß-Gerau district, lying in the southern Frankfurt Rhein-Main Region in Hesse, Germany, and serving as a hub for the surrounding area.-Location:...
summarized the problem: "Whether or not a Communist could be a role model for young people in the united Germany?". The reunification of Germany reinforced the position of those who said no. The school in Erfurt
Erfurt
Erfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nuremberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...
named after Hammann was stripped of his name and the whole pantheon of resistance heroes hailed in the former East Germany suffered a "comprehensive overhaul". Hammann was unsuitable for two reasons: he was a committed Communist and he was officially honoured by the dreaded East German regime. The Communists, Yad Vashem and the Jewish congregation of Erfurt objected, and in November 1993, the city of Erfurt named another school after Hammann. People of Hammann's home town, Biebesheim, denied Hammann the honour.