by H. Runham Brown

Dachau Memorial Sculpture by Nandor Glid; courtesy commons.wikimedia.org

Editor’s Preface: It was only in the aftermath of World War II that War Resisters’ International could begin to tell the story of its wartime clandestine operations to free conscientious objectors imprisoned in Germany or German occupied territories. They wasted no time. The official German surrender came on 7 May 1945, and this article appeared in the summer of 1945 in the WRI official publication. Please see the pdf file for the full article, and the notes at the end for further information. JG

When after the last war the French Government deported their War Resisters to French Guiana (Devil’s Island) it took the War Resisters’ International seven years to trace and bring some of them home. But it was more than seven years before we could tell that tragic story of Devil’s  Island. Now it is twelve years since our German and Austrian comrades began to find their way into Buchenwald and Dachau Concentration Camps. At last the story can be told.

It was in 1933 that Fritz Küster, Secretary of the Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft (German Peace Society) was drinking coffee in a Berlin café with Ingeborg Andreas, his fiancée. Suddenly the exits were covered by armed men. The Gestapo had come. Fritz was arrested and carried off. Ingeborg followed him and saw the doors of the Gestapo headquarters close behind him. For many months Ingeborg Andreas and Fritz Küster’s office colleague, Lotte Leonhardt, fearlessly searched for news of Fritz. They made contact with S.A. men (Sturm-Abteilung) in their endeavour to get news. One day an S.A. man asked Ingeborg to go on a long train journey with him, hinting she might learn something. With a good deal of fear she went. At the end of the journey was a long, lonely tramp through desolate country. In the quiet of a lane they waited. Soon two other S.A. men appeared, and with them Fritz Küster. Two hours they had together—the S.A. men waiting at a little distance—and then they had to part, Fritz returning to the camp, Ingeborg on her long journey back, thankful for those two hours but wondering when they would meet again and how she could make that possible.

Read the pdf of the complete article here: Buchenwald and Dachau

Reference: IISG/WRI Archive Box 116: Folder 2. The article is from The War Resister, Issue 50, Summer 1945, pp. 3-6; courtesy of WRI/London.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Herbert Runham Brown (1879-1949) was appointed the first secretary of War Resisters’ International in 1922, and was Chairman 1946-1949. He served two and a half years imprisonment for conscientious objection, and was the author of pamphlets and books against Hitler, and the Spanish Civil War.