Siegmund Glücksmann

Siegmund Glücksmann (30 May 1884 – 6 October 1942) was a German-Jewish socialist politician. In the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most prominent figures of the German minority socialist movement in Poland, functioned as its 'party ideologue' and represented the more Marxist oriented wing of the movement.

In 1911 the Jewish Social Democracy in Galicia, the Jewish affiliate section of the Polish Social Democratic Party of Galicia, merged into the ŻPSD. Glücksmann became a member of the Executive of the unified ŻPSD.

War and Post-war In 1913 Glücksmann began post-graduate studies in Law. Glücksmann's university studies were however interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. Glücksmann became an officer, commanding over a company of carabiners. Glücksmann was wounded in the war, and settled down in Bielsko (Bielitz). In Bielsko, he opened an attorney's office of his own.

Rise of fascism Glücksmann welcomed the Popular Front line adopted by the 7th congress of the Communist International in 1935. In Bielsko, local National Socialists began a campaign of harassment against Glücksmann. As a result, Glücksmann resigned from his position as the chairman of the DSAP organization in the Bielsko subdistrict. The attacks against the party did however not decline.

Exile and death In September 1939, Glücksmann and his family fled to Volhynia and from there to Lwów (Lemberg or Lviv). In Lwów he began working as an Arithmetics teacher. In the fall of 1940, once the area was taken over by the Soviets following the Soviet invasion of Poland, he was deported to Yoshkar-Ola, where he worked as a woodcutter. After the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement between the Polish government in exile and the Soviets, Glücksmann was free to leave Yoshkar-Ola and in the fall of 1941 he moved to Bukhara. He died in typhoid at a Bukhara hospital on 6 October 1942. His wife and children later returned to Poland, and would eventually migrate to Sweden.