Fritz Pröll
Encyclopedia
Fritz Pröll was a resistance fighter against the Nazi
régime.
in "protective custody" for "conspiracy to commit high treason
". During his three-year solitary confinement
(then the maximum penalty for youths), he was constantly in the penal company. On 25 January 1939 he was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp
. There he met his brother Josef, who was likewise interned at Buchenwald.
On 14 March 1942 came his transfer to Natzweiler-Struthof
concentration camp. There he fell deeply in love
for the first time, with a Jewish internee, who probably later perished.
Sometime after 17 December 1943 Fritz Pröll and his brother were brought back to Buchenwald concentration camp. While the resistance managed to keep his brother back in Buchenwald, Fritz was shifted on 1 November 1944 to the notorious Mittelbau-Dora
concentration camp near Nordhausen
in the Harz
.
In underground shelters where the water reached the walls, the daylight never came in, and the crashing and dust from constant explosions made life hell, worked tens of thousands from all over Europe
in drudgery to produce Hitler's "wonder weapons", the V1
and V2
. Wernher von Braun
's career began here, before he became a rocket specialist in the United States
after the war.
There, Pröll also met the resistance fighters Albert Kuntz, Georg Thomas
, Ludwig Szymczak, Otto Runki, Christian Behan, Heinz Schneider, the social democrat August Kroneberg, the Czechoslovakia
n doctor and Communist Dr. Jan Čespiva, the Soviet
flight lieutenant Yelovoy from Odessa
who was at Dora under the false name
Simeon Grinko, and also Polish
, French
, and Dutch
resistance fighters.
Oberscharführer
Sander and Colonel
Eichhorn were specially deployed to arrest the suspected sabotage
group. The camp was covered with a system of spies. When on 18 November 1944 the Wehrmacht
sent two whole trainloads of rockets back marked "Unusable – Sabotage", the fascist terror struck hard. Dozens of prisoners who were suspected of taking part in the sabotage were torture
d and hanged
. Onto beams between two cranes ropes with nooses were fastened, and twelve, fifteen, twenty people were hanged on them at once, strangled once the cranes lifted them up high.
Fritz Pröll busied himself during his long detention with medicine
, thus enabling him to help save many people's lives at Dora. Now, however, he had to use his knowledge so that there would be no danger of his betraying his fellow fighters under torture. In the end, on 22 November 1944, he took his own life with a poison
syringe
. Fritz Pröll was only 29 years old; he had spent 9½ of those years locked up in prisons and concentration camps.
in Gersthofen
did an Internet
project in 2001 on, among other things, the Pröll family's life. They ran into unforeseen difficulties. The mayor
refused to allow the students access to the archive
s. Access could only be gained by court order
.
One of the Pröll family has sought to change the street name Wernher von Braun Straße in Gersthofen to Fritz Pröll Straße, but it has not come about yet. The Town of Gersthofen justified its refusal to change the name arguing that there was a longstanding policy of naming streets in any particular part of town thematically. Following this policy, and to redress any oversight, the streets in a new neighbourhood are to be named after resistance fighters.
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
régime.
Life
The 19-year-old metalworker Fritz Pröll joined Augsburg's biggest resistance group in 1934, the Red Help (Rote Hilfe). Owing to a leaflet distribution campaign in 1935, he was denounced. Before the court Fritz frankly admitted his guilt. From 29 August 1935 he found himself serving a three-year sentence at Landsberg prisonLandsberg Prison
Landsberg Prison is a penal facility located in the town of Landsberg am Lech in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about west of Munich and south of Augsburg....
in "protective custody" for "conspiracy to commit high treason
High treason
High treason is criminal disloyalty to one's government. Participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplomats, or its secret services for a hostile and foreign power, or attempting to kill its head of state are perhaps...
". During his three-year solitary confinement
Solitary confinement
Solitary confinement is a special form of imprisonment in which a prisoner is isolated from any human contact, though often with the exception of members of prison staff. It is sometimes employed as a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a prisoner, and has been cited as an additional...
(then the maximum penalty for youths), he was constantly in the penal company. On 25 January 1939 he was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...
. There he met his brother Josef, who was likewise interned at Buchenwald.
On 14 March 1942 came his transfer to Natzweiler-Struthof
Natzweiler-Struthof
Natzweiler-Struthof was a German concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the Alsatian village of Natzwiller in France, and the town of Schirmeck, about 50 km south west from the city of Strasbourg....
concentration camp. There he fell deeply in love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
for the first time, with a Jewish internee, who probably later perished.
Sometime after 17 December 1943 Fritz Pröll and his brother were brought back to Buchenwald concentration camp. While the resistance managed to keep his brother back in Buchenwald, Fritz was shifted on 1 November 1944 to the notorious Mittelbau-Dora
Mittelbau-Dora
Mittelbau-Dora was a Nazi Germany labour camp that provided workers for the Mittelwerk V-2 rocket factory in the Kohnstein, situated near Nordhausen, Germany....
concentration camp near Nordhausen
Nordhausen
Nordhausen is a town at the southern edge of the Harz Mountains, in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Nordhausen...
in the Harz
Harz
The Harz is the highest mountain range in northern Germany and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. The name Harz derives from the Middle High German word Hardt or Hart , latinized as Hercynia. The legendary Brocken is the highest summit in the Harz...
.
In underground shelters where the water reached the walls, the daylight never came in, and the crashing and dust from constant explosions made life hell, worked tens of thousands from all over Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
in drudgery to produce Hitler's "wonder weapons", the V1
V-1 flying bomb
The V-1 flying bomb, also known as the Buzz Bomb or Doodlebug, was an early pulse-jet-powered predecessor of the cruise missile....
and V2
V-2 rocket
The V-2 rocket , technical name Aggregat-4 , was a ballistic missile that was developed at the beginning of the Second World War in Germany, specifically targeted at London and later Antwerp. The liquid-propellant rocket was the world's first long-range combat-ballistic missile and first known...
. Wernher von Braun
Wernher von Braun
Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun was a German rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and in the United States after that.A former member of the Nazi party,...
's career began here, before he became a rocket specialist in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
after the war.
There, Pröll also met the resistance fighters Albert Kuntz, Georg Thomas
Georg Thomas
Georg Thomas was a German general and a resistance fighter in the Third Reich. He was also heavily involved in the planning and carrying out of the economic exploitation of the Soviet Union, including in particular the Hunger Plan.- Career summary :Thomas was born in Forst , Brandenburg...
, Ludwig Szymczak, Otto Runki, Christian Behan, Heinz Schneider, the social democrat August Kroneberg, the Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
n doctor and Communist Dr. Jan Čespiva, the Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
flight lieutenant Yelovoy from Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
who was at Dora under the false name
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Simeon Grinko, and also Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, and Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
resistance fighters.
Sabotage and terror in the camps
The unarmed, half-starved prisoners managed to thwart Hitler's wonder weapon plan. In one third of the rockets sent off in 1944, the mechanisms failed. Out of all the 10,800 V2 rockets that were deployed, more than half blew up while still aloft. The SSSchutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
Oberscharführer
Oberscharführer
Oberscharführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that existed between the years of 1932 and 1945. Translated as “Senior Squad Leader”, Oberscharführer was first used as a rank of the Sturmabteilung and was created due to an expansion of the enlisted positions required by growing SA membership...
Sander and Colonel
Colonel
Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...
Eichhorn were specially deployed to arrest the suspected sabotage
Sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
group. The camp was covered with a system of spies. When on 18 November 1944 the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
sent two whole trainloads of rockets back marked "Unusable – Sabotage", the fascist terror struck hard. Dozens of prisoners who were suspected of taking part in the sabotage were torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
d and hanged
Hanging
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...
. Onto beams between two cranes ropes with nooses were fastened, and twelve, fifteen, twenty people were hanged on them at once, strangled once the cranes lifted them up high.
Fritz Pröll busied himself during his long detention with medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
, thus enabling him to help save many people's lives at Dora. Now, however, he had to use his knowledge so that there would be no danger of his betraying his fellow fighters under torture. In the end, on 22 November 1944, he took his own life with a poison
Poison
In the context of biology, poisons are substances that can cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism....
syringe
Syringe
A syringe is a simple pump consisting of a plunger that fits tightly in a tube. The plunger can be pulled and pushed along inside a cylindrical tube , allowing the syringe to take in and expel a liquid or gas through an orifice at the open end of the tube...
. Fritz Pröll was only 29 years old; he had spent 9½ of those years locked up in prisons and concentration camps.
Since the war
A school class from the Paul-Klee-GymnasiumGymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...
in Gersthofen
Gersthofen
Gersthofen is a municipality in the district of Augsburg, in Bavaria, Germany. It is situated on the west bank of the Lech River, approx. north of Augsburg....
did an Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
project in 2001 on, among other things, the Pröll family's life. They ran into unforeseen difficulties. The mayor
Mayor
In many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....
refused to allow the students access to the archive
Archive
An archive is a collection of historical records, or the physical place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the function of an organization...
s. Access could only be gained by court order
Court order
A court order is an official proclamation by a judge that defines the legal relationships between the parties to a hearing, a trial, an appeal or other court proceedings. Such ruling requires or authorizes the carrying out of certain steps by one or more parties to a case...
.
One of the Pröll family has sought to change the street name Wernher von Braun Straße in Gersthofen to Fritz Pröll Straße, but it has not come about yet. The Town of Gersthofen justified its refusal to change the name arguing that there was a longstanding policy of naming streets in any particular part of town thematically. Following this policy, and to redress any oversight, the streets in a new neighbourhood are to be named after resistance fighters.
Literature
- Gernot Römer: Für die Vergessenen : KZ-Aussenlager in Schwaben; Schwaben in Konzentrationslagern. - Augsburg : Presse-Dr., 1984
External links
- School project about Fritz Pröll
- School project thwarted at every turn (see above)
- "Anna, ich hab Angst um dich", a film by Josef Pröll, Junior and Wolfgang Kucera about Anna Pröll, Fritz Pröll's sister-in-law,