History of the labor movement – Harry and Martha Naujoks: Two live for the liberation

Where the call murder is raised to the political principle, where the previously emphasized bottle of schnapps becomes a political argument, where the lowest instincts are mobilized every day – anti -Semitism finds its breeding ground. But freedom, peace and security of all people are also threatened there. » These sentences sound terrifyingly up to date. But they date from 1962. Harry Naujoks spoke on October 14th in Essen at the federal meeting of former Sachsenhausen prisoners. It was the high phase of the Cold War – a time when communist resistance fighters in the Federal Republic, in particular, experienced reprisals again. The authorities had banned the KPD and even years of concentration camps did not save those affected from further persecution.

The political situation did not yet allow communist resistance fighters to perform in schools or talked to young people. It only changed in the 1980s – when many former National Socialists had to vacate their offices in politics and judiciary due to age. Harry Naujoks only experienced this development in her beginnings. He died in 1983. But he made a decisive contribution to making the history of anti -fascist resistance visible in West Germany.

Chronicler of the Nazi terror

Harry Naujoks took over the chair of the Sachsenhauskommitees of the Federal Republic of Germany, was involved in the international Sachsenhaus committee and in the association of the persecuted of the Nazi regime (VVN) and later in the VVN-BDA. In 1987 the Röderberg publishing house posthumously published its memories as the camp elder under the title “My life in Sachsenhausen”. Two years later, the book also appeared in the Dietz publishing house of the GDR. Both editions shaped research on the history of the National Socialist concentration camp system. Numerous historians resorted to Naujoks’ writings and paid tribute to him as a particularly credible chronicler of the Nazi terror. The book recently published by Metropol Verlag about the trade unionist Hermann Scheffler from Naujoks’ work.

Now committed people have reissued his long out of print. The initiative came from the group “Children of Resistance”-an association of descendants of Nazi resistance fighters, including the recently deceased son of Willi Naujoks. They contacted the historian Henning Fischer, who with “women in resistance. German political prisoners in the Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück »already presented an important work on anti-fascist women in 2020.

Naujoks’ report “My life in Sachsenhausen” ”also edited Fischer in a careful edition. It makes it transparent, as the book was created. Fischer marked text passages that the editing had supplemented and that did not appear in the original manuscript – which Naujoks wrote together with former fellow prisoners. He also points to passages that the editing has deleted. Under the title “The text of a survivor and its collective history”, Fischer analyzes how strongly the joint work of prisoner comrades and comrades shaped the report. “The numerous steps from the first notes to the printed book left a lot more footprints than the conventional authority of Harry Naujoks suggests,” writes Fischer. The texts were created in the 1980s-a time when many Nazi resistance fighters made their experiences public, be it at events or in publications.

Read history today

But how do we read these texts forty years later? Fischer also deals with this question. He describes how he, as a young historian, approached a text that was previously unknown to him that had been created many years before his birth. “The view of Harry Naujok’s’ Sachsenhausen report is a member of a” country before my time “, writes Fischer as a member of my generation, as a historian and as a politically thinking person. It affects central history-philosophical questions that become even more pressing in today’s handling of the certificates of the Nazi resistance-now that only a few contemporary witnesses live.

The central question remains: How do we read your history today – and how do we deal with the comprehensive compendium with the over 1400 pages? The two volumes “Martha Naujoks – Harry Naujoks: Two lives for the liberation” initially focus on the life story of Martha and Harry Naujoks. Like her husband, Martha joined the communist movement at a young age. In contrast to him, she was able to emigrate to the Soviet Union, where she took on tasks within the communist structures. But there, too, she did not protect her commitment from repression. Like many convinced communists, she got into the machinery of Stalinist persecution. Unlike many others, she was able to successfully defend herself against her exclusion from the Communist Party in Moscow Exile.

Like many convinced communists, Martha Naujoks got into the machinery of Stalinist persecution.

For many years, Martha believed that the National Socialists had murdered their husbands in the concentration camp. It was only shortly after the collapse of the Nazi regime she learned that Harry had survived. Weaked by the detention in Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg, he returned to Hamburg – and immediately plunged into political work. But the KPD leadership soon put him cold. Because both he and Martha were part of the so -called reconciler in the Weimar Republic. They stood early against the socially fascist line of the party, which social democrats equated with Nazis.

Both members of the KPD remained, but they withdrew from active party work. Harry Naujoks used the time won – in addition to his profession and passion for gardening – to deal intensively with the history of anti -fascist resistance. Martha accompanied him, but mostly stayed in the background.

Unusual testimony

The two volumes impressively show how committed the Naujoks devoted themselves to history policy. The so-called “buddy talks” are particularly noteworthy: Former Sachsenhausen prisoners met regularly for several years in order to log and discuss their experiences together. On this basis, Naujok’s memories were created – a credible and differentiated testimony that still shapes historical research. Naujoks reported on the various groups of prisoners, including those who classified the Nazis as “criminal” or “anti -social”. He set important impulses for research that does not play against each other, but focuses on everyday life and behavior of the prisoners – and not only the angle they had to wear on the prisoner clothing.

In his contribution to the compendium, Henning Fischer also makes a critical analysis of the texts. It shows how the books emerged from the notes of the “buddy talks” and how the expenses in the FRG and the GDR differ. The work is supplemented by 47 international contributions to fascism – by author such as Antonio Negri, Eric Hobsbawm or Peter Weiss. These contributions make the work a global reading book about resistance and persecution. The two volumes set standards for how we can deal with the history of anti -fascist resistance in a time without contemporary witness. But the question raised by Henning Fischer remains: How will there be this story to read this story?

Peter Badekow et al. (Ed.): Martha Naujoks – Harry Naujoks. Two life for the liberation. Vol. 1: Unit and defeats; Vol. 2: Between Revolution and Inferno. Children of resistance, 1414 pages, born, 59 €.
The book will be presented on August 26, 2025 at 8 p.m. in the Black Risse bookstore in Berlin-Kreuzberg. www.schwarzerisse.de