- Alfred Haag
Alfred Haag (1904 – 1982) was a member of the Youth movement of the Communist Party of Germany (
KPD ) in the smallWürttemberg town ofSchwäbisch Gmünd in the 1920s, he married another Communist;Lina Haag in 1927. He was an volunteer editor for theSueddeutsche Zeitung workers inStuttgart , later he was elected a member of the regional Parliament for the KPD untilHitler 's rise to power in 1933. Both Alfred and Lina were soon arrested, and both spent many years in Prisons andConcentration Camp s.Alfred was first in the Upper Kuhberg Concentration Camp near
Ulm until it was dissolved in 1935, then at theDachau concentration camp until 1939, when he was transferred to theMauthausen concentration camp . Lina was released in 1939, and having been reunited with their Daughter, she moved to Berlin and obtained work. She visited the HQ of the SS almost daily to petition for her husband's release until 1940, when she finally, and incredibly, obtained permission for an audience withHeinrich Himmler and he secured Alfred's release from Mauthausen. He had survived physical torture whilst detained there and at Dachau.Alfred was soon afterwards drafted into the Army and sent to the Eastern Front, and Lina and their daughter were bombed out of their home in Berlin, and Lina was transferred to work in a hospital in
Garmisch Whilst there she wrote a memoir of he experiences in the form of an extended letter to Alfred, not knowing if she would see him again. It was eventually published in 1947 as 'A Handful of Dust' or 'How Long the Night' in English.Alfred was taken prisoner by the Red Army and eventually released in 1948, when they were reunited once again and lived together in Munich until Alfred's death in 1982. Alfred worked until his death as advocate for the victims of the Camps in the "Association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime" (VVN). For many years he was its
Bavaria n regional chairman. Lina Haag still lives in Munich and, in 2007 she was given the Dachau Award for Courage. [Lina Haag; A Handful of Dust; one woman's struggle 1933-1945, ISBN N/A ]References
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