Anton Saefkow

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Anton Emil Hermann Saefkow (born 22 July 1903 in Berlin; died 18 September 1944 in Brandenburg an der Havel, executed) was a German Communist and a resistance fighter against the Nazi régime.

Anton Saefkow came from a socialist working-class family and in 1920, as a metalworker's apprentice, joined the Communist Youth League to whose Berlin leadership he rose in 1922. In 1927 he became KPD secretary in Berlin, then in Dresden. In 1929-1932 he led the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (Revolutionäre Gewerkschafts-Opposition; RGO) in the KPD's Ruhr district and became in 1932 political leader of the KPD's Wasserkante district in Hamburg.

From April 1933 until April 1934, the Nazis imprisoned Saefkow in a concentration camp, for two and a half years after that in a labour prison (Zuchthaus), and then once again at Dachau concentration camp. There he organized an illegal remembrance service for Edgar André and was then sentenced to another two years' imprisonment.

Released from detention in July 1939, Saefkow soon took illegal work back up. In Berlin, after the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, he built up the biggest KPD resistance group, the so-called Operative Leadership of the KPD. In 1944, he led, together with Bernhard Bästlein and Franz Jacob the group that agitated against the war in Berlin munitions plants, and called on people to commit sabotage. In April 1944, the social democrat Adolf Reichwein established contact with Saefkow to include the KPD group in the July 20 Plot, which sought to assassinate or otherwise overthrow Adolf Hitler. It eventually took the form of a briefcase bomb attack on the Führer at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia, but it failed, and the consequences were dire for most of the plotters. In July 1944, Anton Saefkow was arrested, and on 5 September, he was sentenced to death at the Volksgerichtshof. On 18 September, at the labour prison in Brandenburg, he was put to death.

Anton Saefkow left behind a wife and two daughters. Shortly before his death, he wrote to his wife Änne: "Through this letter I want to thank you, my comrade, for the greatness and beauty that you have given me in our life together...Only today, with these lines, thinking about you, have I had wet eyes for the first time since the sentence. For the pain, which might tear me apart, restrains reason. You know I am a pugnacious person and shall die bravely. I only ever wanted good..."

On 2 February 1975, a square in Berlin-Fennpfuhl was given Anton Saefkow's name. Along with him, other resistance fighters such as Franz Jacob and Bernhard Bästlein were also honoured, with streets in the same neighbourhood being named after them. In Prenzlauer Berg, a greenspace called Anton-Saefkow-Park is not only named for Saefkow, but also features a bust of him. In Brandenburg an der Havel the street running before the very prison where Saefkow and many other members of the antifascist resistance were put to death by the Nazis has been named Anton-Saefkow-Allee.

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[edit] Literature

  • Hermann Weber, Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus; Bd. 2, Frankfurt a.M. 1969, 267f
  • E.R. Greulich, Keiner wird als Held geboren; Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 1961
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