History of the Labor Movement | Harry and Martha Naujoks: Two Lives for Liberation

Where character assassination is elevated to a political principle, where the previously emptied bottle of liquor becomes a political argument, where the lowest instincts are mobilized daily – there anti-Semitism finds fertile ground. But there, too, the freedom, peace, and security of all people are threatened." These sentences sound frighteningly current. Yet they date back to 1962. Harry Naujoks spoke them on October 14 in Essen at the federal meeting of former Sachsenhausen prisoners. It was the height of the Cold War – a time in which communist resistance fighters in particular were once again subjected to repression in the Federal Republic. The authorities had banned the KPD, and even years of imprisonment in concentration camps did not protect those affected from further persecution.

The political situation did not yet allow communist resistance fighters to appear in schools or engage in dialogue with young people. This only changed in the 1980s, when many former National Socialists were forced to resign from their political and judicial positions due to age. Harry Naujoks witnessed only the beginnings of this development. He died in 1983. But he made a decisive contribution to making the history of the anti-fascist resistance visible in West Germany as well.

Chronicler of Nazi terror

Harry Naujoks took over the chairmanship of the Sachsenhausen Committee of the Federal Republic of Germany, was active in the International Sachsenhausen Committee, the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN), and later in the VVN-BdA. In 1987, Röderberg-Verlag posthumously published his memoirs as a camp elder under the title "My Life in Sachsenhausen." Two years later, the book was also published by Dietz-Verlag in the GDR. Both editions shaped research on the history of the National Socialist concentration camp system. Numerous historians have drawn on Naujoks's writings and praised him as a particularly credible chronicler of Nazi terror. The recently published book about the trade unionist Hermann Scheffler by Metropol-Verlag also quotes Naujoks's work several times.

Now, activists have reissued his long-out-of-print writings. The initiative was initiated by the group "Children of the Resistance" – an association of descendants of Nazi resistance fighters, among them the recently deceased son of Willi Naujoks. They contacted historian Henning Fischer, who published an important work on anti-fascist women in 2020 with "Women in the Resistance: German Political Prisoners in the Women's Concentration Camp Ravensbrück."

Fischer has also carefully revised Naujoks's account, "My Life in Sachsenhausen," in a revised edition. He sheds light on how the book came about. Fischer has highlighted passages added by the editors that were not included in the original manuscript—which Naujoks wrote together with former fellow prisoners. He also points out passages that the editors deleted. Entitled "The Text of a Survivor and Its Collective Origins," Fischer analyzes the profound impact the joint work of fellow prisoners and comrades from two generations had on the report. "The numerous steps from the initial notes to the printed book left far more footprints than the conventional authorship of Harry Naujoks would suggest," Fischer writes. The texts were written in the 1980s—a time when many Nazi resistance fighters made their experiences public, whether at events or in publications.

Read history today

But how do we read these texts forty years later? Fischer also grapples with this question. He describes how, as a young historian, he approached a previously unknown text that had been written many years before his birth. "For me, as a member of my generation, as a historian, and as a politically minded person, looking at Harry Naujoks' Sachsenhausen report is, in two ways, a glimpse into a 'land before my time,'" Fischer writes. In doing so, he touches on central questions of the philosophy of history that become even more pressing in today's approach to the testimonies of the Nazi resistance – now that only a few contemporary witnesses are still alive.

The central question remains: How do we read their story today—and how do we deal with this more than 1,400-page compendium? The two volumes, "Martha Naujoks – Harry Naujoks: Two Lives for Liberation," initially focus on the life stories of Martha and Harry Naujoks. Like her husband, Martha joined the communist movement at a young age. Unlike him, she was able to emigrate to the Soviet Union, where she assumed roles within the communist structures. But even there, her commitment did not protect her from repression. Like many committed communists, she became entangled in the machinery of Stalinist persecution. Unlike many others, she was able to successfully fight her expulsion from the Communist Party while in exile in Moscow.

Like many convinced communists, Martha Naujoks fell into the machinery of Stalinist persecution.

For many years, Martha believed that the Nazis had murdered her husband in a concentration camp. Only shortly after the collapse of the Nazi regime did she learn that Harry had survived. Weakened by his imprisonment in Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg, he returned to Hamburg and immediately plunged back into political activity. But the KPD leadership soon sidelined him. Both he and Martha belonged to the so-called Conciliators in the Weimar Republic. They opposed the party's social fascist line early on, which equated Social Democrats with Nazis.

Although both remained members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), they withdrew from active party work. Harry Naujoks used the time he gained—in addition to his job and his passion for gardening—to delve deeply into the history of the anti-fascist resistance. Martha accompanied him, but mostly stayed in the background.

Unusual testimony

The two volumes impressively demonstrate the Naujoks' commitment to historical politics. Of particular note are the so-called "Kumpelgespräche" (friendship talks): For several years, former Sachsenhausen prisoners met regularly to document and discuss their experiences together. Naujoks's memoirs emerged on this basis – a credible and nuanced testimony that continues to shape historical research today. Naujoks reported on the various prisoner groups, including those the Nazis classified as "criminal" or "asocial." He provided important impetus for research that does not pit one group against another, but focuses on the prisoners' everyday lives and behavior – and not just the chevron they were forced to wear on their uniforms.

In his contribution to the compendium, Henning Fischer also undertakes a critical analysis of the texts. He demonstrates how the books emerged from the transcripts of the "Kumpelgespräche" (Friends' Conversations) and how the editions in the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR differ. The work is complemented by 47 international contributions on fascism – by authors such as Antonio Negri, Eric Hobsbawm, and Peter Weiss. These contributions make the work a global reader on resistance and persecution. The two volumes set standards for how we can deal with the history of the anti-fascist resistance in a time without contemporary witnesses. But the question posed by Henning Fischer remains: How will future generations read this history?

Peter Badekow et al. (eds.): Martha Naujoks – Harry Naujoks. Two Lives for Liberation. Vol. 1: Departures and Defeats; Vol. 2: Between Revolution and Inferno. Children of the Resistance, 1,414 pp., hardcover, €59. The book will be presented on August 26, 2025, at 8 p.m. at the Schwarze Risse bookstore in Berlin-Kreuzberg. www.schwarzerisse.de