Heinz Rauch

Heinz Rauch (23 November 1914 - 19 December 1962) was a German activist and politician (KPD, SED) who fought against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. His wife Märta and two of the couple's three sons, Kurt and Bernd, were also killed.

Life Heinz Rauch was born into a working-class family in Schönefeld (Leipzig). His first full-time job, between 1929 and 1932, was as a clerk with the Dresdner Bank. A set-back came in November 1934, however, when Rauch was arrested. On 5 July 1941, accompanied by Franz Stephany, he was sent back to Norway in order to make contact with the (by this time illegal) Central Committee of the Communist Party in Oslo. They stayed for several days before Rauch slipped quietly across the border back into Sweden. The military authorities agreed that Rauch should be permitted to return to his Saxon homeland, where for a couple of months, till March 1946, he attended the "Fritz Heckert" party academy at Ottendorf. The stated purpose of the party merger, which in the event took effect only in Germany's Soviet occupation zone, was to avoid a return to power of a nationalist-populist government (as had happened in 1933), facilitated by divisions on the political left. Heinz Rauch was one of hundreds of thousands of Communist Party members in the Soviet zone who lost no time in signing their Communist Party membership over to the new party.

In November 1950 Rauch accepted a position as senior press officer ("Pressereferent") with the East German Ministry of Labour. On 19 July 1958 Rauch was appointed to membership of the important National Planning Commission, then under the chairmanship of Bruno Leuschner. On 4 July 1962 he was also appointed to the Ministerial Council.

Among his other appointments, Heinz Rauch was made a member of the party's National Audit Commission ("Zentralen Revisionskommission der SED") at the fourth party congress in April 1954.

Heinz Rauch's work conferred significant and (in East Germany) highly unusual international travel privileges, which evidently extended to family members. On 19 December 1962 Rauch and his wife Märta, along with two of their sons, were passengers on the second leg of a LOT flight from Brussels to Warsaw, which had touched down in Berlin for a mid-way stop. On the final approach to Warsaw the Vickers Viscount 804 crashed slightly more than a kilometer short of the runway and burst into flames. There were no survivors among the 28 passengers and 5 crew members. Heinz and Märta Rauch were survived by their youngest son, Lars Rauch. Agnes Rauch, the mother of Heinz Rauch, was also still alive at the time of his death.

Following the accident, during the early afternoon of 28 December 1962, the Party Central Committee and the Ministerial Council held a high-profile celebration ceremony ("Trauerakt") for Rauch and his recently deceased family members at Berlin's Baumschulenweg Crematorium.