Beaten But Not Defeated

by Merilyn Moos

  Palmier (2006) tells us that there were German frontier guards on the German side of the frontier to Saarland; some anti-fascists made use of clandestine crossing points from Germany to reach Saarland, crossing the border at night, or disguised as local climbers as the area is mountainous or with local assistance. Siegi headed for Saarland. It may well have had a political draw for him: the KPD already had established a clandestine press and organisation centre there (explored later). Moreover, Siegi had the relative advantage of being acquainted with mountain walking, as he had spent some of his childhood in a mountainous area, getting to school in some winters on skis, he had told me.

  In general, the trajectory via Saarland to Paris was a “normal” escaping-route for many KPD members (Sonnenberg, U., in private correspondence). Some wanted to support the struggle against the affiliation of the Saarland and for some the aim was to build the new KPD headquarter for Western Europe in Paris. For example, Münzenberg was instructed to go to Paris in order to rebuild the headquarters for Agitprop and his different organisations. (In fact, in 1935, when Saarland was about to fall under Nazi rule, and the League of Nations withdrew paying for their upkeep, 7000 members of the underground/exiles then fled to Paris (Palmier, 2006)).

  Altogether, it took Siegi seven to eight months between disappearing from his and Lotte’s flat in Auguststrasse to reappearing in Paris around August (according to MI5 records). By the presumably straighter route of modern ‘A’ roads and motorways, it is 596 miles/962kilometres from Berlin to Bern, then about 225 miles/360 kilometres from Bern to Saarbrucken. So the overall distance covered was probably roughly 800 miles/1300 kilometres. If he was averaging eight miles a day, and, improbably, walking every day, the journey would have taken him a hundred days, a bit over three months.

  How Siegi survived for so long on the road, dodging the Gestapo and SA and always fearful of casual or deliberate betrayal, will never be known. What was he living off? He may have been given a personal ‘contact map’ of comrades (presumably with false names), part of the ‘underground’, who could offer him a floor and food. He certainly will have had a network of contacts from his different zones of previous political activity but would he want to put these people at risk - or indeed would he have trusted them enough to knock at their doors? Maybe he had been tasked with trying to organise the Communist resistance underground. Maybe the Party paid him in some form. On the rare occasions he referred to his ‘walk to freedom’, what I sensed all those years later was how isolated and afraid he had been.

  Siegi did tell me something of his ‘walk’ across Germany and explained to me how a cobbler had saved his life. The soles of his shoes had completely worn out and he had no choice but to have them repaired. He was walking through small towns and villages, not through larger towns, and went into the local cobblers. Apparently, not a word was exchanged. My father told me he was terrified the cobbler would give him away as soon as he was out of the shop and get himself a few ‘brownie’ (or SS) points, even a reward; my father had walked on fearing imminent arrest. But nothing happened. He saw the cobbler’s cooperation as an act of silent solidarity, and seemed to give my father a hope in humankind.

  Theoretically, the KPD had built up an underground organisation. One effect of May 1st 1929 was that the KPD became both more aware of the importance of building for probable illegality (Rosenhaft, 1983).115 But as already mentioned, the KPD, despite its nominal acceptance of the Comintern’s instructions to build a parallel illegal organisation, had not done too well. Merson (1986) claims that the underground unit of the KPD had become little more than an intelligence gathering body. Of course, there is now new evidence, referred to earlier, that the CC had acquired its own para-military defence unit (H. Marpe), but this was not of use to its membership and its absence from most historical records, including Merson (1986), suggests a lack of effectiveness as well as that it was clandestine. Nevertheless the KPD, by the end of 1932 (in other words only a couple of months before Hitler becomes Chancellor) did introduce some preparations for semi-illegal work, such as setting up clandestine quarters and contacts, directing clandestine work as well as arranging for alternative presses in Germany and abroad (Merson, 1986).116

  But in general, preparations for illegality seem to have been more policy than practice. Even after Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933, it seems the KPD Central Committee in their first illegal meeting on 7th February, did no more than make the usual gestures towards the importance of illegal work, without any sign of increased urgency or real commitment (Rosenhaft, 1983). Indeed, the evidence suggests (based on my parents’ memories, sources from Rosenhaft, 1983, evidence from the Berlin 3 and key documentation from Fomferra) that the KPD were not fully prepared in 1933, with too many brave comrades getting picked up within months of the Nazis getting into power.

  This absence of an effective underground network is all the more noteworthy given how many of the organisations broadly associated with the KPD had become illegal well before 1933, such as the Freethinkers, the Red Front, that the KPD’s associated papers, for example Rote Fahne, were regularly banned as were events such as the Sports Revue. Indeed, the Red Front’s cadres, who were mostly KPD, had been working under clandestine conditions since 1929, which Rudi testified to. Nevertheless, one interpretation of Siegi’s (and another comrade at the time, Reimann’s) flights from Germany is that there was enough of an underground organisation to allow him to walk his way across Germany.

  At the end of March 1933, the Politburo - finally - decided that the presence of almost all its members in Germany had become too dangerous. From autumn 1933, the leadership of the KPD were almost all in exile, the Politburo based in Paris, at least up till 1935 when they moved on to Moscow and Prague (Merson, 1986). By March 1933, my father was already in hiding and had left Tanta Klara’s by the end of March, so may not have heard of the KPD’s decisions. But it is also possible that my mother misre-membered or never really knew the exact length of time that Siegi hid at Tante Klara’s and that, in reality, Siegi only set off at the end of March, not mid-March, after the Politburo’s decision to send many of its leading cadres abroad.

  After the KPD leadership appreciated the necessity of preparing for illegality, it divided itself into two sections - a Home or Internal leadership, based in Berlin, and an External leadership, led by Pieck, based in Paris, a structure which had taken effect by May (Merson, 1986). The External leadership was responsible for émigrés. John Scher, who had been close to Thaelmann, was initially the key to organising underground work and contact for émigrés. We can surmise that Siegi would have at some level been under his ‘guidance’. But Scher, who was the only member of the Party leadership to stay in Germany, was arrested in November 1933 - just after Siegi had finally got out to France - and was murdered in February 1934 (Merson, 1986, Palmier, 2006).

  In June 1933, the Internal and External sections coordinated that the KPD papers should be printed and then distributed by the External leadership from abroad (Merson, 1986). The External leadership, now moved to Paris, became responsible for the crucial publication of the Party’s paper, Die Rote Fahne and other materials for the underground, as well as making arrangements for people and publicity to be smuggled in and out of Germany (Merson, 1986). It can be no more than conjecture but it is possible that Siegi was ‘sent’ to Paris to help to organise all this. Organising the presses for the distribution of illegal leaflets and pamphlets, a crucial part of the resistance, had become extremely dangerous and difficult.

  At the same time, the KPD were forced to move their printing headquarters from Berlin to Saarland in 1933. Significantly, the Technical Branch, first based in Berlin, which then moved to Saarbrucken, carried out printing operations, though it apparently developed a controversial level of autonomy (Merson, 1986). It is not clear where Die Rote Fahne was actually published, as Merson (1986) has it being published in both the Saarland (whose organisational structure, Merson describes as ‘complicated’) and Paris.
From mid-March, Rote Fahne was produced two or three times a month in Saarbrucken, though - understandably - by 1934, this had gone down to about once a month (Merson, 1986). (Again, here is not the place to explore this but the KPD members in the local workplaces and communities bravely produced a torrent of papers, dependant for their national news and theoretical analysis on receiving the Party paper.)

  In mid-Spring, the Gestapo, although they theoretically had no powers in Saarland, broke up the printing organisation (Merson, 1986:117). All operations had to be moved on, largely - and remarkably - to Düsseldorf, Solingen and later, Cologne, but they were all broken up in 1935. Between 1933-35, about 50,000-60,000 copies were illicitly published per run, from a variety of presses (Merson, 1986). After 1935, the difficulties became even greater.

  My father was lucky to have got safely into Saarland and not to have been caught. Given that Saarbrucken provided a KPD clandestine centre, as detailed above, there is the real possibility that he headed there because instructed to and because he could help with Party work.117 Also he could be helped across the frontier into France. At some point, Siegi got out using the local workers train which ran into Forbach, the train which he claimed was checked in turn by the Gestapo and the French police. He had, he said, no way of knowing when he got onto the train if he would get of it in the hands of the Gestapo. I presume, but without any evidence, that the underground in Saarbrucken had furnished him with sufficient forged papers (and French francs) to try to get him through the different possible checks into France. Siegi kept the ticket which I now possess. He told me that when he got off the train and saw a policeman, he had to stop himself from running. Do not draw attention to yourself, he had thought. And then he remembered that he was in France and free.

  It is noticeable - but could nevertheless be coincidence - that the two places we know Siegi ends up in - Saarbrucken and Paris - have printing presses. Presumably, his central involvement in the earlier production and publication of the ATB will have given him significant hands-on experience of writing articles, working printers and organising the production of literature. The fact that my father never mentioned Saarbrucken to me, indeed gave me the impression that the train which ran from into France came out of Germany, lends weight that his involvement in Saarbrucken was political and clandestine. It could not be talked about even many decades later.

  Across the border in France, Siegi caught a train and arrived to Lotte’s welcome in Paris. One of Lotte’s few stories, always told with exultation, was that one day, on intuition alone, she had gone down to the Gare de l’Est. She had not heard from Siegi since the night of the Reichstag fire. And there he was, strolling along the platform, just having alighted from a train.

  Stay in Paris

  Lotte had arrived in Paris in April. She had got official papers from the police and had caught a real train. She told me she nevertheless dressed up for the occasion, wearing a sombre tweed suit and carrying a bunch of funereal flowers. She arrived in Paris not knowing anybody but with a contact with a man who ran a small textile plant, who offered her a job as a ‘bobineuse’.119 She got herself a flat in a working class tower block somewhere behind Montmartre. The name escapes me but the block was called after one of the Communist heroes, so presumably she got the flat through a political network.

  Always brilliant at languages, Lotte could converse fairly easily at work and elsewhere. Somehow, she read the political tea-leaves: she spotted the rise in xenophobia and antisemitism, and decided the tea leaves were not propitious. (The extreme right was indeed getting ever stronger). Very soon after she and Siegi were reunited, Lotte left alone for England. Based on MI5 documentation, it was a mere month after Siegi arrived. Lotte insisted it was not safe to stay in France and that, anyway, she wanted to study Economics at the LSE.

  Paris was a common destination for the early political refugees who saw it as far closer to their cultural and geographical home than London (Pennybacker, 2009). According to Reiter (2011), Paris in the mid-1930s was apparently the place where the political debates took place to pull together the fragmented left. Around 25,000 entered France soon after the Nazi seizure of power, 85% of them Jews (Pennybacker, 2009). (3000 Central European Social Democrats and 3500 Communists got to France before Daladier introduced internment. Half a million subsequently fled Spain.) Pennybacker (2009) argues moreover that there was also a strong movement in support of the refugees, which allowed the refugees some breathing space (Pennybacker, 2009). A variety of left groups and support organisations, even including some on the left of the Catholic Church, agitated for refugee rights. Moreover, the French based aid agencies were far more political than in the UK, because the left were, from early on, far more willing to work with each other than was the case in the UK. Moreover, their emphasis was far more than here on the political, not the ‘Jewish’ refugees.

  So why did Siegi not stay longer in Paris? It is not possible now to understand the balance of all the different possible factors. I have found no personal or official correspondence or any relevant sources covering this period. Does Siegi again not leave with Lotte because of his commitments to Party work? Were they finding resuming their relationship difficult? As explored later, their relationship did not go well in London and this brief re-encounter in Paris may well be an early indication of things going wrong.

  On the other hand, was Siegi aiming for London all along and simply needed that extra time to get together the relevant documents to gain access to the UK? Perhaps he needed Lotte to be in the UK, where she had relatives who had moved here at the beginning of the twentieth century, before he had the right to come over to join his wife. Maybe the ultra-right’s rapid increase in popularity and influence in France meant that Siegi could no longer obtain a residence permit, and that was why he had to move on.

  But it is not just that Siegi stayed, but that Lotte left. Lotte, who never would be told what to do by anybody, wanted to go to the LSE. Maybe she also despaired of having a relationship with Siegi in which she would be his first commitment. Lotte used to insist that she had saved my father’s life twice, once in the flight from Germany, the second from France. This suggests that Siegi had serious other commitments in France. Lotte certainly believed that without her, Siegi would have remained in Paris – and not survived.

  Indeed, there is the further question as to why Siegi did subsequently go to London. Factors external to Siegi’s (and Lotte’s) own desires will have undoubtedly effected their decisions. Paris was increasingly seen by the KPD as unsafe politically and was moreover a long and complicated way from the German frontier for smuggling in papers. The KPD leadership in exile in Paris all moved on within about a year. Siegi was too well known to be sent back into Germany and not important enough - or perhaps not willing to desert Lotte - to be sent onto somewhere like Prague.

  The rise of the ultra-right was a major factor in Siegi and Lotte’s decision to get out of France. Siegi’s departure in February will have been made more pressing by the mobilisation of the ultra-right in Paris. (Unfortunately, the exact date Siegi left France is unknown.) On 6th February 1934, there were fascist riots in Paris, which confronted French troops, with twelve dead, which some on the left saw as an attempt at a fascist coup. On the 9th February, a strike was called by the French Communists, resulting in violent clashes, especially in the working class suburb of St Denis, with five dead. On 12 February, the successful call for a general strike, led to the Socialist and Communist marches merging in Paris. This marked the effective end of the third Period: a position of cooperation with the Socialists became the dominant position by mid-1934 (following a bitter internecine battle within the French Communist party).

  It has been credibly argued that the divisions associated with the antisemitism of the Dreyfuss affair (ironically a distant relative of Siegi’s, or so he told me) had a long running effect on France. French antisemitism became exceptionally entangled with anti-capitalist sentiment, though it receded temporarily after the end of
World War I. But the depression years reopened xenophobic attitudes, particularly in the liberal professions, and particularly as a result of the influx of German anti-Nazi refugees from 1933: about 25,000 in 1933 alone, a far larger number than arrived altogether in the UK till after Kristallnacht (Caron, 2005).118 Within weeks, local businesses, doctors and other professionals in Paris and elsewhere were complaining bitterly about foreign competition, a position strongly laced with antisemitism. In 1933, when the French government enacted liberal provisions for German refugee students to complete their university degrees in France, these tensions were further exacerbated. Already in 1933, Parliament passed a law that limited the practice of medicine to French citizens, and in 1934 and 1935, it passed additional laws that barred even naturalised immigrants from becoming a doctor for five to ten years following their naturalisation.120 McMeekin (2003)121 also quotes Münzenberg in spring 1934, stating he was exhausted because of the police surveillance. Münzenberg was using Paris as a base to get the printed word relatively easily into Germany (Pennybacker, 2009).122 Even if surveillance was likely to be more intense in Münzenberg’s case, the level of surveillance and repression experienced by many of the Communist refugees, such as Siegi, was generally acute. Siegi will have been aware of the racist xenophobic climate and been under police surveillance. He may well also have been unable to find a job, although my suspicion is that he was working for and being paid in some manner through a section of the Communist network.

  A clue may lie in the similar path followed by Reimann.123 He also first escaped from Germany to Paris and then went onto London (Hrebeniak, Guardian obituary, 1.3.2005), where he pops up in the KPD exile group in London, along with Siegi. The obituary stated: ‘He soon discovered that the radical political circles that had always engaged him now lay across the English Channel.’ In London, there was a KPD exile group and for Siegi too, its existence may have been a motivating factor. But we may again be observing the hidden hand of the KPD, directing their cadres from Paris to London to protect them from the increasing right wing popular and political hostility in France. Maybe, as Reimann was also an ‘intellectual’ type, it indicates that the External section of the KPD had decided to keep their ‘organic intellectuals’ safe in London.