Execution Invoices for ‘Uncle Emil’
Resistance activist Ruth Andreas-Friedrich learns of fallen comrades.
BERLIN-Steglitz (May 6, 2024) — One day, in May 1944, Ruth Andreas-Friedrich was surprised to run into a colleague in the stairwell of the publishing house where they both worked. The man, Oscar Fischer, was an illustrator for ‘Young Woman’ magazine (Die Junge Dame), where Andreas-Friedrich was editor. She was startled to see Fischer, because she knew he’d been picked up by the police,
on suspicion of being part of the anti-Nazi resistance.
“Man of God, you’re alive!” she cried.
“Not so much as before,” Fischer replied sadly. “But somewhat.” (“Nicht mehr so ganz; aber ein Bißchen.”)
Having no choice but to believe his repeated denials, the Gestapo allowed him to return to his life and work. He’d seen other friends in prison, he told Andreas-Friedrich, assuring her that none of them had ‘finked.’
Fischer then gave more details of what he’d seen from his prison cell, including the executions of three comrades of “Uncle Emil” (Onkel Emil), their Berlin underground resistance group. One by one, each friend obediently shed his clothes and walked naked into a former garage, now fitted with a “death machine.” The process took only two minutes for each man, three among hundreds of people killed that year, Germans accused of showing disloyalty to the Reich, damaging the public morale.
Unmentioned in the press, scores of such “criminals” were being arrested and processed by a secret court — a panel of sycophantic state judges, delivering summary verdicts in the name of a national “anti-crime” initiative. Through that year and into the next, the system produced a league of silenced martyrs, right up until the government’s very last day.
In a monotone voice, Fischer described the awful “back-row seat” in which he’d landed, a reluctant audience member in the state’s “Execution Theater.”
“It’s not just the beheadings — you get used to that,” he told Andreas-Friedrich. “It’s all the trappings and trimmings (Drum und Dran) of the deed. The (whole) heinous ceremony.” (Die scheußliche Zeremonie.)….