Beginning of the Nazi Era:
Between Invisibility and Solidarity
Anna Veronica Pobbe
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 3 (2025): 443-458 DOI 10.38145/2025.3.443
In a 1934 publication of the International Red Aid (MOPR), it can be read that Rudolf Diels, head of the Gestapo between 1933 and 1934, described communist women as “the most stubborn enemies of the state because they did not become informers despite being tortured.” Despite their absence in higher positions of the RHD (Rote Hilfe Deutschland, German Red Aid), women played a major role in the activities of the RHD: “It was women [in fact] who drove the bailiffs out of their homes and the provocative Nazis out of the welfare office. […] In the Ruhr region, proletarian housewives put together a delegation and demanded a pay rise for their husbands in the factories. Women prevented arrests and demanded the release of their husbands. This was the case in Berlin and Breslau, where women snatched an arrested apprentice and market trader from the police. In Berlin, the police were unable to arrest a communist in one factory because the workers threatened to go on strike. In the Rhineland, 40 women went to the district administration office and demanded the release of their husbands. In another place, 60 women and their children forced the release of 40 prisoners through a demonstration. In Freiburg, women achieved the release of a communist woman.”2 Taking this attestation as our starting point, the current paper aims to shed a light, at first, on the communist women activism during the Nazi Era. This activism is also reported by some members, like Rosa Lindemann, who was also the leader of a mostly women resistance group based in the Tiergarten district of Berlin: “Some of our women helped the men whose wives had been arrested in the household and looked after the children. We had contacted over thirty families and were able to alleviate some of the suffering. It was a particular joy for us to hear how happy our comrades in the prisons and penitentiaries were that we were looking after their relatives and caring for them.”3 Secondly, the paper aims to address the peculiar strategies that were used by the women, like it has been reported in the Berlin Moabit case, where there was a circle of women, that organized relief campaigns and met weekly, disguised as coffee parties or meetings in garden sheds; these women collected money for relatives of the prisoners and helped resistance fighters who had gone into hiding.4 Last, but not the least, the paper aims to address some key-role women in the Red Aid scenario: like Ottilie Pohl, who died in Theresienstadt.
Keywords: communist women, political activism, solidarity, Third Reich, resistance