Wilhelm Hammann

Willhelm Hammann (; 25 February 1897 in Biebesheim am Rhein – 26 July 1955 in Rüsselsheim ) was a German educator and communist politician. A town councilor and a member of the provincial parliament of Hesse in the 1920s, he was imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp from 1938 to 1945. In April 1945, Hammann, who was the blockälteste of the children's barrack, sabotaged the planned movement of Jews on a death march to a certain extermination. Yad Vashem awarded Hammann the title of "Righteous among the Nations". Yisrael Meir Lau, current chairman (as of May 2010) of Yad Vashem Council, was one of the children saved by Hammann.

In 1946, the American authorities questioned Hammann's real role as a privileged prisoner, accused him of active collaboration with the SS and imprisoned him at Dachau concentration camp. Hammann was acquitted by the Buchenwald Trial in May 1947. He became a hero in East Germany posthumously when propagandists elevated the antifascist resistance in Buchenwald to the level of a foundational myth of the DDR. Attempts to honour his name in the united Germany failed due to his commitment to communism.

Biography

Hammann was born in a family of a railroad worker and a midwife, the first of nine children. He grew up in a working-class town and attended a school in Gernsheim (1907-1913) and a free teachers' college in Alzey. In 1916 he was drafted into German army, and served in Belgium and Russia. In 1932 he was convicted for a second time, but the sentence was suspended, perhaps as a precaution against the buildup of Nazi influence. Communists, in particular, occupied strategic positions in the "indirect rule system" since the start. At the end of 1944, another three-year-old Jewish child was born in Buchenwald and raised secretly by the prisoners.

When the privileged "red" prisoners heard rumours of the upcoming evacuation of Jews, they sabotaged preparations for the death march. According to Yad Vashem, "Wilhelm Hammann who was the head of Barrack 8 where the children were held, among them Rabbi Lau, and who had the children replace the patches identifying them as Jews". Among these children was Yisrael Meir Lau, chairman of Yad Vashem Council since November 2008. His brother Naphtali Lau-Lavie was stationed in a different barrack and escaped Buchenwald on 8 April 1945.

Hammann himself did not ever speak about these events, and none of the witnesses spoke about him until his death. He was by no means the sole saviour of the Buchenwald Jews: the separation of children under the tutelage of a prisoner-teacher was influenced by Erich Reschke in summer 1943 and continued by Franz Leitner, both communists. According to William Niven, "perhaps the greatest of all communist achievements for the children was the setting up of children's block, 'Block 8'." According to American reports and West German Social Democrats, Hammann illegally staffed his office with fellow Communists. Yad Vashem Lexicon of the Righteous calls the American charges false. Hammann stood the Buchenwald Trial and was acquitted and released in May 1947. he was killed in a traffic accident when his car ran into a parked American tank. The East German doctrine rested on three "pivotal" events - the death of Ernst Thälmann (18 August 1944), the "uprising" (11 April 1945) and the survival of Stefan Jerzy Zweig, the child of Buchenwald. The story of Zweig was publicized in 1958 in Naked Among the Wolves, a novel by Bruno Apitz (himself a survivor of Buchenwald) that became a cornerstone of East Germany's myth of anti-Nazi resistance in Buchenwald. It did not mention Hammann, but his ordeal fitted the propaganda model, and in 1959, Hammann's life story was serialized in East German press.

This decision started a public debate over Hammann's real persona between those West Germans who felt that Hammann deserved better recognition and those who disputed it. A 1996 school essay contest sponsored by the Jewish congregation of Groß-Gerau summarized the problem: "Whether or not a Communist could be a role model for young people in the united Germany?". The reunification of Germany reinforced the position of those who said no. The school in Erfurt named after Hammann was stripped of his name and the whole pantheon of resistance heroes hailed in the former East Germany suffered a "comprehensive overhaul". Hammann was unsuitable for two reasons: he was a committed Communist and he was officially honoured by the dreaded East German regime. The Communists, Yad Vashem and the Jewish congregation of Erfurt objected, and in November 1993, the city of Erfurt named another school after Hammann. People of Hammann's home town, Biebesheim, denied Hammann the honour.